A History of Terrifying, Demonic, B*tchy Women

In the midst of last week’s midterm elections, President Trump doubled down on his goal of eroding the rights of women -- planning a partial rollback of a law securing workplace allowances for pregnancy and reproductive health, allowances that a University of Wisconsin study found contributed to a 10% drop in miscarriages. This follows a slew of Trump administration attacks on abortion rights this past year, including the Justice Department's plan to intervene in the Texas lawsuit against Planned Parenthood, the FDA's ongoing investigation of the abortion drug mifepristone, and the implementation of a near total abortion ban at the VA. And of course, it’s not just here – a UN report earlier this year tracked women’s rights regressing worldwide this year. Globally, women have 64% of the legal rights of men, and more than half of the nation's countries still don't define rape by law on the basis of consent.

Eleanor Johnson is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. To wrap her head around the horrific misogyny of this moment, she dove into the past, and found depictions of women as demons and monsters across thousands of years. For the midweek podcast, host Brooke Gladstone speaks with Johnson about her new book, Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women, which chronicles the slow evolution of an archetype, from Ancient Mesopotamia to modern horror, that has been around for so long that it almost feels like a natural part of human history.