In the final episode of the season, we’re focusing on Mother Earth. We talk to microbiologist Maya about researching the tiniest living parts of the natural world, accounting for bias, plant emotions, and the ecstatic delight of slime blobs.

Topics Touched:

plant diseases, creepy plant metaphors for human bodies, the handful of differences between humans and fruit, our tendency to frame natural non-human phenomena through a patriarchal lens, the powerhouse of the cell, endosymbiotic theory, Trofim Lysenko, the creepiness of constructing the Earth as a mother, questioning who gets to benefit from the idea of “Earth’s bounty,” blobs and all the blobbing to be had in microbiology, blobbing as motherhood, fucking shit up, the slime mold scholar-in-residence at Hampshire (not Hamilton) College, cyanobacteria and the Great Oxygenation Event, how microbes thanklessly run the world, Julian’s eternal question is “Is this a mom?”, every blob is a mom, slime as a fun and popular toy for children, swamps are a great jam, fens are a specific kind of marshland, traumatic acid, all of your feelings and biases are meat, humanity was the true slime all along

Works Cited:

• Lynn Margulis (published originally as Lynn Sagan) – On the Origin of Mitosing Cells
• Hampshire College – visiting non-human scholar Physarum Polycephalum
• Ghostbusters II
• Aparna Nancherla

Wren describes his home life with cats Duncan, a massively kingly whiner, and Sweet Sweet, a deadly assassin, who would probably for that very reason make a great mom.

This week we welcome poet and shark-lover Wren to discuss critters, creatures, and creepy-crawly moms of all kinds. You can find Wren on Twitter @suitofscales and be sure to check out his work at wrenhanks.com. Sabrina also joins again to discuss the wonders and horrors of the natural world and its multitude of mothers.

Topics Touched:

sharks, the intensity of mantis shrimp mothers, the philandering of mantis shrimp fathers, New Orleans, the fact that baby sharks are adorably called pups, warm feelings for sharks, the heart-warming fact that baby lemon sharks form childhood friendships, the social mores of great white sharks and their love of big ladies, beautiful and mysterious goblin sharks, majestic emoji-faced whale sharks, alligator gar and their poisonous eggs, snails colonizing Wren’s toilet, living in trash swamps, wild hogs, mama gators, alligator sex and nest temperature, rats, hawk drama (the male hawk in question is not Pale Male), Pale Male, living side by side with critters

Works Cited:

• BBC One – Shark

Trans writer, gamer, and resident eldritch abomination Sabrina Boynton joins us this week to discuss a sensitive topic very near and dear to everyone’s heart: giant fucking spider moms.

Topics Touched:

abject horror, Sonic Dreams, Charlotte’s Web, maternal industriousness, James and the Giant Peach, arachnophobia, The Red Spot, the devouring mother, the castrating mother, love bombing, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, the void, Ungoliant, unlight, Shelob, deadlights, Dungeons and Dragons, Lolth, matriarchy, The Drow, racism, anti-blackness, the politics of genre fiction, C. S. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, The Black Goat of the Woods With A Thousand Young, post-coital cannibalism, sometimes a man is a snack, ovipositors, doubling and doubles, Ceto and Echidna, vore

Works Cited:

• Louise Bourgeois – Maman
• Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook 5th Edition
• Michael Moorcock – Starship Stormtroopers
• Barbara Creed

Cora is with us again to talk about black cultural studies, motherhood, and gender. You can check out Cora’s multi-media work at https://polychora.org/.

Topics Touched:

Hortense Spillers, foundational work in black studies, cultural archetypes of black womanhood, the Moynihan Report, gender and race in the American imagination, construction of black motherhood, erasure of black fatherhood, intersectionality and what happens when terms from cultural theory hit the discourse without context (it’s fine), Harold Bloom and the anxiety of influence (he is wack though), productive misreading (but performativity still doesn’t mean what you think it does)

Works Cited:

• Hortense J. Spillers – Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book
• Patricia Hill Collins – Controlling Images and Black Women’s Oppression
• Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw – Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color
• Judith Butler – Gender Trouble

Cora joins us again to to discuss race, blackness, mothering and motherhood, and reproductive labor. You can explore Cora’s work at https://polychora.org/.

Topics Touched:

housewifery as administrative experience, the institution of “hired help,” the legacy of slavery, the archetype of the mammy, controlling images, Octavia Spencer, black female characters in film, the perverse psychodrama of US whiteness, the wild psychosexual landscape of global white imperialism, our own moms

Works Cited:

• Patricia Hill-Collins – Black Feminist Thought
• H. Rider Haggard – King Solomon’s Mines
• Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man
• The Help
• Hidden Figures
• The Shape of Water
• Annabelle
• Girl Interrupted
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Jules Verne – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• Lindsay Ellis – “My Monster Boyfriend”

Cora–scholar, multi-media artist, ancient prophet, and very good friend–joins us to talk about the Motherland and the role of maternal figures in colonialism and post-colonialism. Check out Cora’s website to explore their work.

Topics Touched:

T.S. Eliot’s voice, wrinkled dugs, World War I propaganda, weaponized white motherhood, nationalism, South African colonial and post-colonial history, Section 377, conveniently short historical memory, historical fantasy, gender and motherhood in the post-colonial imagination, getting personal, feminist ethics of care v. reproductive labor, the possibility that maybe capitalism might be bad

Works Cited:

• Sherry Ortner – “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”
• Zakes Mda – The Heart of Redness
• Silvia Federici – Wages Against Housework
• Lindsay Ellis – “My Monster Boyfriend”

Seth joins us again to discuss his search for a Jewish divine femininity, female messiahs, and androgynous God.

Topics Touched:

two thousand years of shitposts, Hephzibah, Zerubbabel, Battle Mary, The Talmud, Asherah, Elohim, King Josiah, Elijah, Code of Hammurabi, Kabbalah, androgynous God and Adam, Chasidism

Works Cited:

• Martha Himmelfarb – Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel
• Raphael Patai – The Hebrew Goddess
• Names of God in Judaism
• The Jewish Study Bible
• Ada Rapoport-Albert – Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666-1816

“If I had a second mouth on the back of my head, would it also have to keep kosher?” Seth explains important Jewish texts by comparison to internet fandom and exploring such genuine medieval rabbinical shitposts.

Artist and pinko, punko, proto-rabbi Seth joins us to discuss uncovering ancient Jewish goddesses and deities through linguistic deep dives into the Talmud. In particular, we trace the convoluted yet compelling poly triad of our hostile and indifferent lesbian moms: the ocean, the moon, and their demon girlfriend Lilith. Also, turns out the Leviathan was a lady and God has maybe turned her into (kosher) jerky for us to eat at the end of the world. Who is she and… how does she taste?

Topics Touched:

Ugaritic poetry, ancient Hebrew, divine inspiration, Schooner A.J. Meerwald, near death experiences at sea, Tehom, Tiamat, Joseph’s technicolor dreamcoat was a lady’s dress, Titanomachy, Marduk and Apsu, creation myths, the Leviathan, Kosher apocalypse, The Eschaton, the archaic mother, Rashi, Rabbinical logic, returning light to the moon, Lilith

Works Cited:

• The Jewish Study Bible
• Rabbi Steven Greenberg – Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition
• Raphael Patai – The Hebrew Goddess
• Julia Kristeva