Biting All The Apples

Sara Kaye Larson and Joanna Vantaram

Biting All The Apples is an unhinged bookclub-ish conversation that channels the sassy wisdom of long dead victorian feminists to analyze the puritanical influences still messing with our world today.   We start off with the 1895 best seller "The Woman's Bible" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Each week we cover their 19th century feminist analysis of a book in the bible and ponder, laugh, and cry over the similarities to the issues of today.  This is a great listen for anyone interested in the patriarchal influence in religion, politics, and social order. As well as anyone that is GenX or any generation, anyone that likes comedy, books, history, and thinkin.

  1. 1D AGO ·  BONUS

    Special Episode: Mother's Day, Memorial Day, and The God of War - A history and reading mash-up

    Mother’s Day and Memorial Day show up like clockwork, but the stories we tell about them are missing the peaceful roots. We go back to the nineteenth century to recover what got sanded down: Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation is not soft-focus nostalgia, it’s a direct anti-war demand for women to refuse a world that sends husbands home “reeking with carnage” and trains sons to injure other people’s sons. From there, we follow the on-the-ground organizing that made “Mother’s Day” real before it became a greeting-card script. Anne Reeves Jarvis builds Mother’s Day work clubs to fight epidemics with sanitation and community care, then uses that same infrastructure to insist on reconciliation after the Civil War. We also track how peace activism collides with World War I, and how Mother’s Day messaging gets co-opted into a patriotic storyline that praises sacrifice while making dissent feel shameful. We then connect the holiday arc to The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sooj and Barbara Mor, which argues that patriarchy sustains itself through a perpetual state of war, backed by the global religion of money.  Finally, we share the lesser-known origins of Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina, where freed Black communities honored Union dead with reburial, flowers, hymns, and a massive procession in 1865, an act of memory that looks a lot more like coming together than propaganda. If this reframes how you think about American patriotism, the military-industrial complex, or the meaning of remembrance, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review. What part of this history hit you hardest? Show Notes Will Be Updated Soon! More info: Mother's Day https://www.history.com/articles/mothers-day-peace-movement-origins Memorial Day https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/ MUSIC STUFF: THE MOTHER’S DAY Music by Bomb Sound from Pixabay National Anthem by Ievgen Poltavskyi from Pixabay PATRIOT song Music by Florews from Pixabay MoneyCha-Ching Sound Effect by u_byub5wd934 from Pixabay Spirit of Victory Music by Hoà Huỳnh from Pixabay Doom sound effect Sound Effect by MrDwarf92 from Pixabay Civil War FanFare Sound Effect by Sergei Chetvertnykh from Pixabay Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye Music by LAURENT BUCZEK from Pixabay John Brown's Body Music by Lisa van Beergen from Pixabay Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    36 min

  2. MAY 11

    Welcome To The Machine, Please (un)Repress Yourself: The Great Cosmic Mother pt 4

    America loves the word “freedom,” so why do so many of us feel spiritually starved, politically cornered, and weirdly isolated from our own bodies? We pull a thread from The Great Cosmic Mother and it turns into a whole tapestry: patriarchal religion doesn’t just shape private belief, it builds the rules of the modern world. When the sacred gets split from the lived, you end up with what the book calls the American split, a culture that can offer abundance and ideology but not wholeness, ecstasy, or a shared vision worth living for. We walk through the historical tension that still haunts US politics: Puritan Christianity feeding fundamentalism and Protestant capitalism, while many founders leaned Deist and helped birth secular humanism. That gap helps explain why “Judeo-Christian nation” rhetoric keeps resurfacing, and why people who aren’t religious still live inside religious structures. We also dig into the book’s critique of the all-male divine family, the virgin birth story, and how women’s unpaid labor, sexuality, and guilt get converted into fuel for institutions that claim to speak for God. Then we hit the hardest link: control female reproduction and you can control the workforce. We talk capitalism, labor rights, reproductive autonomy, and what it means to live inside a machine that tries to turn humans into mechanisms.  It's way more fun than it sounds, trust us. Press play and be sure to share the episode everywhere! SHOW NOTES WILL BE UPDATED EVEN MORE SOON Here's some stuff we talked about: "One nation under god" - added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954: https://www.history.com/articles/pledge-allegiance-under-god-schools "In God We Trust" first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864 during the Civil War. It was added to paper currency much later, with the first bills entering circulation in 1957 following a 1955 law requiring it on all money. The phrase was added to reflect religious sentiment, with paper, and to distinguish the U.S. from "godless" communism during the Cold War: https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The-legislation-placing-In-God-We-Trust-on-national-currency/ And here's Thomas Jefferson's Bible: https://americanhistory.si.edu/jeffersonbible/#1 Paine’s Anti-Slavery Legacy: https://thomaspaine.org/resour Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    1h 4m

  3. APR 27

    Sky Daddy: The Biggest Buzzkill of 'em All: The Great Cosmic Mother Pt 3

    We’re deep in The Great Cosmic Mother, landing in the final section on “Patriarchal Culture and Religion” where the dots connect fast: the split from Earth to sky, the invention of a distant father God, and the long campaign to make the body feel dirty, dangerous, and controllable. Something that affects each and every one of us, whether we attend church or not. We talk through how The GCM tells us that patriarchy rewrote spiritual reality by ripping women out of the life giving narrative, turning birth and blood into shame, and replacing embodied joy with guilt, rules, and obedience. Along the way we connect the “God as Father” framework to virgin birth logic, modern purity culture, and today’s obsession with policing sex, reproduction, and LGBTQ lives.  Then we follow the material trail: stored grain, property, money, cattle wealth, and the rise of standing armies. The episode links patriarchal religion to labor exploitation, class systems justified by original sin, and professional warfare that turns conquest into “holy” duty. We also get into the imperial tactic that still makes our stomachs drop, redirecting colonized men’s rage away from their conquerors and toward women, fueling misogyny as social control. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next chapter, share the episode with a friend who can handle broads with big ideas, and leave a review. What part of this story do you recognize most in your own life right now? Music credits: The_Mountain by Dmitrii Kolesnikov from Pixabay kontraamusic holy-water-hiphop-instrumental Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    55 min

  4. APR 13

    The Don't Want Us To Remember This Stuff: The Great Cosmic Mother Pt. 2

    Wonder how you got trapped in the machine?  We've got all the answers for you. Using our book of the moment, The Great Cosmic Mother, we break down how ancient goddess-centered cultures that were so real and connected through birth, death, creativity, ecstacy, and the earth - got totally crushed and rewritten with a patriarchal influenced monotheistic jealous god. The change coincided with a rise in conquering, violence, and a focus on production - a desire to change humans into worker bots to feed the machine. We know this really happened because the book has so many receipts and well, it's a culture that we still live in.  Some episode highlights: • using haiku as a quick grounding tool when your justice sensitivity flares up • rejecting the straight-line patriarchal colonial story of history and progress • evidence for nonviolent settled life and priestess-led religion at Çatalhöyük  • how modern work culture steals sleep, dreams, and inner life  • how Christianity repackaged woman/goddess-related symbols, including menstrual blood • we learn that it was a fig tree that Eve and Adam ate from and quickly decide we aren't changing the name of the podcast Everybody write a haiku and send it to us.  Work less, sleep more, write haikus. Read the book. Notes: Fun short vid with CGM reading: https://www.tiktok.com/@universetrip/video/7503218453923269918 William Irwin Thompson. (Joanna reads a quote) https://williamirwinthompsondotblog.wordpress.com/ Zoey - Reads the Great Cosmic Mother https://open.spotify.com/show/54FiACeQTVyz2RDPpovjIQ?si=1955c55d59c348bc Cassandra Faye Floyd reads The Great Cosmic Mother https://www.youtube.com/live/ZRu9YEwhWPw?si=ZXTickIZwz-wAojn Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    47 min

  5. MAR 30

    Women and Everything Fire: The Great Cosmic Mother Pt1

    We cheese out enough with the whole biting an apple/biting knowledge analogy in this episode so we'll spare you here in the show notes.  We are back for season two - starting the first in a 3 (or 4, we'll see) episode series where we read and discuss and tangent about The Great Cosmic Mother. The biggest feminist text you aren't carrying around in your handbag, but should.  SK & JV discuss some major points, read some major quotes, and majorly go off the rails - this book is the hundred thousand crazy aunts that you needed when you were just a young lass. And we're cracking it open and telling you what we think so you can tell us what you think.  Join us as we talk about waves of feminism, ecofeminism, and giving women a break because our history has been hidden from us and we have to do things like rip it away from the greedy mouths of wealth hoarding men that fear lady power.    We talk about the valuable lessons in TGCM - particularly rejecting the patriarchal idea of linear progress and linear historical progression. We marvel that people used to work 15 hours a week before guys were like we need to monetize every dang thing.   About the book: "The Great Cosmic Mother (1987) by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor is a foundational text in Goddess spirituality that explores ancient, pre-patriarchal matrifocal societies, exploring the Goddess as the supreme cosmic creator. It portrays the divine feminine as intrinsically connected to nature, the moon, and birth, positioning women as the original cultural innovators" Here are a few links to much more thourough explanations of the waves of feminism:    A brief history of feminist waves Kyra Krall  https://www.feministsinthecity.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-feminist-waves What are the Four Waves of Feminism https://www.history.com/articles/feminism-four-waves Zoey/superbflesh reading The Great Cosmic Mother https://open.spotify.com/show/54FiACeQTVyz2RDPpovjIQ?si=49a1e83f916c4a75 Cassandra Faye Floyd reading the Great Cosmic Mother https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk-xEIV1H5EphymeVYoB56cBCu7aXvOiE&si=_4FE_HkR0BzUl6vF Awesome review of GCM from GoodReads user Kathryn Green: My TL;DR: The gist of this book is pretty much the same as the themes and overarching plot of Mad Max Fury Road Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    57 min
  6. You Need Some Counterintelligence For These Mealy Gala Times

    MAR 13 ·  BONUS

    You Need Some Counterintelligence For These Mealy Gala Times

    Time for a tweener episode! What's that you ask? Oh it's just the kind of episode gals make when they're closing out one season and setting up an even cooler second season, but need a sec to tell their audience about all that.  Tweener. Not to be confused with Tweezer.  Quick Episode Outline: • standing between seasons  • why hidden knowledge and history matter when institutions fail  • why isn't anyone saying patriarchy or misogyny after the Epstein files  • how conspiracy culture gets weaponized to divide people from real options  • season two format change from one book to plural books  • upcoming reads including The Great Cosmic Mother and Binding Chaos  • The Woman’s Bible as a runway for questioning what we call “natural”  Disclaimer: Episode contains curses and casual mention of international elite criminal conspiracy. If you'd like to know more about that: https://sarahkendzior.com/2022/11/27/they-knew/ "You Can Just Say Patriarchy" essay: https://jude-doyle.ghost.io/y/ How Epstein and QAnon blew up the justice system: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/if-youre-listening/how-epstein-and-qanon-blew-up-the-justice-system/106332824 Reddit thread and PDF of The Great Cosmic Mother: https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/y7akcs/link_to_the_great_cosmic_mother_rediscovering_the/ Correction:  Cats weren't necessarily worshipped in Egypt, more like revered. Cat Reverence: https://www.history.com/articles/cats-ancient-egypt Binding Chaos PDF: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/69357270/download-free-pdf-binding-chaos-by-heather-marsh Binding Chaos series: https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/binding-chaos/ Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    33 min
  7. A Holiday Hello: Stanton's Christmas Story for Kids and The Bah Humbug Puritans

    12/25/2025 ·  BONUS

    A Holiday Hello: Stanton's Christmas Story for Kids and The Bah Humbug Puritans

    Oh it's been a minute but you'll be glad you listened to this episode. Yes there are podcast updates, yes there's a cool new eZine/book you have to get: The Biting All The Apples Holiday (and any day) Book of 19th Century Inspired Home Amusements & Creative Endeavors  here's the direct link if it's not showing up: https://payhip.com/b/75vhY The holiday joy doesn't stop there.  We've got a short hype message for all of your holiday emotional and physical labor AND you'll find out that puritans really hated Christmas and Stanton wrote a revisionist history Christmas fantasy story for kids.  We share holiday chaos, gratitude for invisible labor, and a warm update on what’s next. Stanton’s risky Women’s Bible, the suffrage split, and her fanciful Mayflower Christmas story spark a look at why mythmaking comforts and what truth demands. • peak lady labor and real appreciation • launch of our 49‑page Victorian amusements zine • why wordplay and in‑person games matter • teaser for the Blackwell family special • Kathy Kern’s insights on Stanton’s reputational cost • family edits that tried to repair Stanton’s legacy • debunking “Christmas on the Mayflower” with primary sources • Puritan opposition to Christmas  • nostalgia, comfort myths, and honest memory • our 2026 motto Here's more information about the reality of the early settlers: https://voyagingthroughhistory.exeter.ac.uk/2020/12/18/christmas-on-the-mayflower/ We used a batch of shared music for this episode and we're grateful to these artists: JOY TO THE WORLD Joy To The World by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/ Wish You A merry Christmas We Wish You a Merry Christmas by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/ Away In A Manger by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artist: http://audionautix.com/ Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    19 min
  8. The She-Showdown: Inside The 1896 Vote To Disown The Woman’s Bible

    11/07/2025

    The She-Showdown: Inside The 1896 Vote To Disown The Woman’s Bible

    A suffrage convention, a censored book, and a friendship that held the line—this is the 1896 showdown few of us were ever taught. We open the appendix to The Woman’s Bible and step into the room where NAWSA leaders tried to distance the movement from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s fiercest work. The resolution’s catty phrasing calling it the “so-called Woman’s Bible” was more than shade; it was strategy, signaling a turn toward (so-called) respectability and away from the root critique that Stanton believed blocked every legal gain: scripture used to justify women’s subordination. We trace the fault lines through names, speeches, and a near-split vote. Charlotte Perkins Stetson offers a surgical amendment to keep the association non-sectarian without shaming dissent. Then Susan B. Anthony rises with a spine-of-steel defense of Stanton, warning that censorship narrows coalitions and that progress cannot survive if questioning sacred authority is off-limits. Her words could be used to-day: you can’t promise freedom with a gag order, and you can’t build a durable movement by appeasing fear. Along the way, we explore why the Bible became the battleground, how the vote re-centered the suffrage movement, and what that decision cost subsequent generations. We connect the dots to today where Christian nationalism, selective literalism, and rights rollbacks test whether advocates will name the story that shapes the law.  We marvel at the lives of victorian women whose lives spanned art, sociology, organizing, and risk. And we end with a poem that captures the ethos: be the rock that sets the boundary, not the tide that flatters and recedes. If this shook your assumptions or filled a missing chapter in your mental timeline, share it with a friend, subscribe for the next deep dive, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or maybe some of your own feminist history knowledge. We read every word. LINKS! The Woman's Bible Repudiated: https://sacred-texts.com/wmn/wb/wb75.htm More about Charlotte Perkins: https://aeon.co/ideas/all-woman-the-utopian-feminism-of-charlotte-perkins-gilman Video Bio: https://youtu.be/Cjw3-lM1Tyg?si=XuejpLTXjWVs_4-b Her letter with her lovah: https://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/CreativeNonfiction/spring00/rabinowitz.html This episode recorded at Bob's Basement Studio. Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson. Send us Fan Mail Credits Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers Leave us a voice mail Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Know how to pronounce something? Are you a religious scholar? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a message right from your phone or computer by clicking here. Recordings may be used in future episodes.   Website https://bitingalltheapples.buzzsprout.com Find us on TikTok and YouTube and BlueSky

    43 min
See All (34)

Trailer

4.7
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

Biting All The Apples is an unhinged bookclub-ish conversation that channels the sassy wisdom of long dead victorian feminists to analyze the puritanical influences still messing with our world today.   We start off with the 1895 best seller "The Woman's Bible" by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Each week we cover their 19th century feminist analysis of a book in the bible and ponder, laugh, and cry over the similarities to the issues of today.  This is a great listen for anyone interested in the patriarchal influence in religion, politics, and social order. As well as anyone that is GenX or any generation, anyone that likes comedy, books, history, and thinkin.

Information

  • Creator
    Sara Kaye Larson and Joanna Vantaram
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Biting All The Apples
  • Show Website
    Biting All The Apples