Biting All The Apples

Biting All The Apples

By Sara Kaye Larson and Joanna VantaramSociety & Culture
Download on the App Store

Biting All The Apples episodes

  • Halloween is Kind of the Ultimate Holiday for an Episode on Radical Privacy

    We all should dress up more. More masks!

    Happy Halloween!  We've frankensteined a terrifying episode for you.   What is more frightening than surveillance? Data collectors? Flock cameras?

    We're creeping in on the Radical Privacy, Radical Transparency chapter in Heather Marsh's Binding Chaos.

    AUTO-SUMMARY

    • thanking Must Read Books for the Heather Marsh book haul
    • why we know celebrities’ lives but can’t track government actions
    • radical privacy for individuals paired with radical transparency for institutions
    • FOIA delays, redactions, and the rising cost of public accountability
    • media incentives that turn the right to information into personality obsession
    • surveillance state realities, data brokers, and normalized identity demands
    • unreadable user agreements and forced consent as a modern trap
    • harassment, doxxing, and “free speech” used to silence women
    • anonymity and pseudonymity as safety, agency, and idea exchange
    • building privacy habits while pushing for structural transparency

    CORRECTIONS (Because sometimes we just go off unsupervised)

    When SK says she saw Rage Against the Machine in 1992. It was actually 1993. 

    SK has an off the cuff rant about communication regulations not being updated since the 60s "or whatever" and that is 1) Not accurate 2) Confusing 3) Brings up a much broader assumptions that are too big to list here. However, the FTC and FEC really haven't updated much until recently so she almost was close to being on to something:

    March 2023: The Federal Election Commission (FEC) implemented a final rule expanding the definition of "public communication" to include paid internet and social media communications, requiring clear and conspicuous disclaimers on digital and online political ads.
    March 2024: The FEC enacted updated rules modernizing regulations for electronic communications, online transactions, contributions via text or internet processors, and digital recordkeeping by political committees.

    Here are the major privacy acts/protections in the US:

    • Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA): Protects wire, oral, and electronic communications while in transit or storage.
    • Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA): Prevents the wrongful disclosure of consumers' video rental and purchase histories.
    • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA): Establishes national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without consent.
    • Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA): Controls the online collection of personal information about children under the age of 13 by website and app operators.
    • Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA): Requires financial institutions to explain their information-sharing practices and protect sensitive customer data.

    EXTRA LINKS/INFO

    The US government has never been more secretive than it is right now
    https://qz.com/1572763/us-government-secrecy-at-all-time-high-under-trump

    How Weak Data Privacy Affects Women
    https://www.womentech.net/forum-topic/silent-crisis-how-weak-data-privacy-fails-women

    History of US Privacy https://safecomputing.umich.edu/protect-privacy/history-of-privacy-timeline

    MUSIC and SFX CREDITS

    Horror Drone ambience music by Tomáš Herudek from Pixabay

    Atmospheric tense Music by Lilliben from Pixabay

    Halloween Scary Music by Dmitrii Spis from Pixabay.  --- also needs YouTube Content Liscenes (downloaded)

    Creepy Dark Atmosphere Music by TrenoX8 

    Orchestral Halloween Music by Breakz Studios 

    Dark Spooky Halloween Music by SOULFULJAMTRACKS 

    Scream Music by Chrysalyn Chrysalyn

    Spooky Piano Music by Nikita Kondrashev 

    Happy Children's Halloween music Music by Alex Ps 

    Scream Sound Effect by Jusatti890 

    PanicFear Sound Effect by Alban_Gogh from 
    Monster sound effects - Sound Effect by DRAGON-STUDIO 

    Supernatural screams and whispers Sound Effect by Alexander Jauk 

    DOOM Music by Geoff Harvey

    Suspense tension Music by Sub_Clair (SO GOOD)

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    37 min
  • The Unsociety: Leeches and Termites - More on Binding Chaos

    It's our pumpkin spice episode!      Ok, no it's not but we needed a placeholder until we can get the show notes up. They will be chock chonk full. Believe that.  In the meantime - enjoy this episode where we talk about the radical book about mass collaboration.  Binding Chaos: society and disassociation and how we aren't living in a society but an unsociety.  

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    57 min
  • Stop Being Such A Noun: Binding Chaos and Individual Rights

    We're back after already being back and then gone again. The fall has brought us many adventures and one gnarly head cold. But SK & JV made it to the microphones to talk about insane campaign ads, the Mackinaw Bridge, and a few chapters in Binding Chaos. 

    Last episode we discussed the first sections of Binding Chaos that covered the problem with democracy. In this edition we cover the dangers of group affiliation and natural and negotiated rights. It will give you so much to think about it won't matter if we don't get another episode out next week. But we will. We really will. 

    Here's a link to Binding Chaos: https://samim.io/dl/Binding-Chaos-Mass-Collaboration-on-a-Global-Scale-by-Heather-Marsh.pdf

    And here's an auto-generated list of what's in this episode:
    • living through major historical shifts and noticing how fast the social baseline changes 
    • using Marx as a lens for how economies shape relationships and identity 
    • why democracy drifts toward oligarchy when groups speak louder than individuals 
    • how campaign ads weaponize othering and sell “difference” as threat 
    • why group affiliation can drive bigotry and make moral people commit atrocities 
    • swapping nouns for verbs as a practical culture shift 
    • “the greater good” as a pathway to mob rule and rights violations 
    • Patriot Act logic and how surveillance expands under child safety rhetoric 
    • natural rights, negotiated rights, and the social contract built on individual dignity 
    • basic needs as rights, not privileges, and what happens when society blocks them 
    • the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what it says, and how caveats hollow it out 
    You can send us an email at bitingalltheaples at gmail.com. 
    You need to like, follow, rate, comment, share this amazing podcast for your health and for the health of America.

    And here are some links for things related to this episode:

    KARL MARX: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
    Genius of the Modern World - Episode 1 - Karl Marx (BBC Documentary, 2016)
    https://youtu.be/V45wESzJ9xc?si=8GOXPNRsZQLYGygj

    NAFTA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
    How NAFTA affected the US:  https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/naftas-impact-u-s-economy-facts/

    Onion Article "Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be"
    https://theonion.com/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-consti-1819571149/

    The Verve Pipe
    Freshman: https://youtu.be/1umEXpGHc0E?si=Gt947PATi1yloJ12

    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LISTENING!  LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF BINDING CHAOS!    email us at bitingalltheapples AT gmail DOT com 

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    1 hr
  • Can We Bind this Chaos or What? Book Talk Plus: Insider Tales from Michigan Dem Primary

    Hello we are BACK!  Back with our book pick: Binding Chaos by Heather Marsh ---- plus our own special Michigan flavored tie-in. 

    Just a few weeks after the Michigan Primary Election, Joanna spills the tea about the Michigan Democratic Convention and how the Michigan Dems came to spend 81 million dollars on a losing candidate that they all knew darn well was not supported by the people. The people, as we all now know, chose Abdul El-Sayed as the MI Dem senate candidate.  And yes, Joanna has met him. They are BFFs.  Ok, maybe not BFFs - just checking to see who reads the show notes. 

    It makes sense when we look at the system through the lens of Heather Marsh's Binding Chaos. This two party election stuff is only meant to serve those in control of the system. She tells us democracy always ends in oligarchy. We do try to be objective/curious readers but we have a hard time finding proof that she is wrong about that.  Representative democracy isn’t just messy, it’s structurally incapable of representing individuals and constantly screws over vulnerable minorities. Can you feel it? Are you awake?  You will be if you make it through this awesome episode. 

    Maybe you'll start to imagine your own ideas about what structures we the people need to create in the new world. 

    Give a listen and hear the inside tale of the convention, sample our latest haikus (amateur poetry warning!), and join in our discussion of the first section of Binding Chaos. We'll be talking about the book for a few more episodes and we really want to know what you think so be sure to leave a comment or send us a text or voicemail.

    Extra karma points for sharing this episode with friends, family, and casual acquaintances. 

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    1 hr 6 min
  • America 250 & The Ladies That Dug Musket Balls Out of Their Legs With Sewing Needles

    This is really the only podcast episode about America 250 you need to listen to this year. 

    We're talking all about America, this totally weird wonderful place we're living in (that, much like a family, is kinda effed up but we are nevertheless tied to in wonder, frustration, appreciation, and codependency) , and the ladies of the Revolution that pretty much made it all happen. Quick reminder that women gave birth to 100% of the US population - and you'd think thank you ladies, that is MORE than enough, but no - wait until you hear about just how much they did.

    Want to celebrate the 4th? Liking, following, rating, commenting, and sharing this podcast is a very righteous way to show your patriotism. 

    Quick outline of this episode (lots of great links & info about the topics below the list):

    • rejecting “real America” as a way to control and exclude 
    • remembering Little Bighorn and following Native American news sources 
    • putting the Constitution in context with 1776 population and slavery numbers 
    • Mary Katherine Goddard printing the Declaration with the signers’ names 
    • Mercy Otis Warren’s warnings about centralized power, courts, and missing rights 
    • Penelope Barker and the Edenton Tea Party boycott as women’s political power 
    • Phyllis Wheatley calling out liberty’s hypocrisy through poetry 
    • Deborah Sampson, battlefield survival, and women in uniform 
    • Oneida and Black patriot stories that complicate the founding myth 
    • reclaiming the American Dream as freedom to build your own life 

    The Battle of the Little Bighorn,
    Narrated by an Indian Who Fought in It
    https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/twomoonslittlebighorn.html

    Indigenous & Native American News Sources

    ITC News
    https://ictnews.org/
    Indji Public Media
    https://indijpublicmedia.org/
    Native America Calling
    https://www.nativeamericacalling.com/
    Turtle Talk
    https://turtletalk.blog/
    High Country News
    https://www.hcn.org/
    Last Real Indians Native News Desk
    https://lastrealindians.com/

    Minnesota Public Radio Native News: https://www.mprnews.org/native-news

    On the US population density - groovy visualization maps: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/maps-extremes-us-population-density/

    More than 45million Americans were born elsewhere - debunking immigration lies:  https://www.vera.org/news/debunking-the-lies-politicians-say-about-immigrants. Newsweek's cool article about 250 years of waves of immigration: https://www.newsweek.com/america-immigration-waves-250-years-of-arrivals-12113152

    Founding a New Nation at the Expense of Enslaved People https://njsbf.org/2024/08/17/founding-a-new-nation-at-the-expense-of-enslaved-people/

    Black Patriots of the American Revolution: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-black-patriots-american-revolution

    Baddies of the 1770s - Revolutionary Women:

    Mary Katharine Goddard
    https://www.nps.gov/articles/independence-goddard.htm

    Mercy Otis Warren https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mercy-otis-warren and her book History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution https://archive.org/details/historyofrisepro03warrrich

    Edenton Tea Party https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/edenton-tea-party/

    Deborah Sampson https://www.mass.gov/info-details/deborah-sampson-american-revolutionary-war-hero

    Tyonajanegen https://www.amrevmuseum.org/virtualexhibits/meet-the-figures-oneida-nation-theater/pages/two-kettles-together-2  From the Daughters of the American Revolution: https://honoringourpatriots.dar.org/patriots/sarah-martin-tyonajanegen-two-kettles-together/

    Phillis Wheatley https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley and https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/tracing-the-life-of-phillis-wheatley-peters/

    Mammy Kate https://vanishinggeorgia.com/2024/05/14/mammy-kate-and-daddy-jack-forgotten-black-patriots/

    Martin Women of 96 https://www.nps.gov/people/the-martin-women.htm

    Here's a list of the music and sound effects we used - thank you artists for making cool stuff and sharing it:

    Patriotic 
    Music by Florews from Pixabay.
    Positive Americana 
    Music by Dvir Silverstone from Pixabay
    American Landscape
    Music by Dvir Silverstone from Pixabay
    Dark Folk Americana
    Music by Alana Jordan from Pixabay
    Sweet Love Americana
    Music by Dvir Silverstone from Pixabay
    Up With The Sun.   (Lovely violin)
    Music by primalhousemusic from Pixabay
    Star Spangled Banner PIANO
    Music by Anastasia Chubarova from Pixabay

    Rock Guitar Star Spangled Banner
    Music by BLACKBOX from Pixabay



    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    1 hr 12 min
  • A Stormy Weather Introduction to Our Next Read: Heather Marsh's Binding Chaos

    We recorded this episode with a storm radar glowing beside us, true summertime style!

    Join us as we joke our way through Michigan good-weather guilt and then pivot into a serious as in seriously thought-provoking new book that questions the political truths we’re taught to accept. 

    Heather Marsh’s Binding Chaos: Mass Collaboration on a Global Scale, pushes us to ask why representative democracy so often turns into oligarchy and what technology changes about power, voice, and responsibility. 

    Here's the auto-generated highlights for those of you that dig a table of contents: 
    • Michigan daylight guilt and how screens keep kids inside 
    • Why weather is not small talk when it shapes daily life 
    • Moving from care-centered society toward political truisms 
    • Introducing Heather Marsh’s Binding Chaos and its core claims 
    • The argument that representative democracy trends toward oligarchy 
    • How majority rule can erase the most vulnerable 
    • Real-world examples of who gets to debate trans health care and women’s bodies 
    • Fear, algorithms, and distraction versus climate and disaster realities 
    • Heather Marsh’s background in programming, human rights, and open information work 


    Liking, following, commenting, and sharing this podcast really helps our indie efforts and RESPELLS THE WORLD!

    The Book(s): https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/binding-chaos/

    See what others have said about "Binding Chaos":

    https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/07e8305b-c1f8-4dd6-8d70-364d108d9f0c

    https://www.loomio.com/blog/2014/04/15/heather-marsh-government-as-mass-collaboration/

    Binding Chaos on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/bindingchaos/

    Envision This interview with Heather Marsh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAt6sWE18Bk


    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    34 min
  • Undeceive Yourselves! Respell The World: The Great Cosmic Mother pt5

    "Imagination is a memory moving both forward and backward in time."

    - Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother

    Now just imagine that both yesterday and tomorrow have the full show notes and not the autogenerated ones and you just so happened to visit on this day.    We're joking of course - the autogenerated notes are temporary - new ones will be updated soon. All the contact info is correct!

    --------Autogen summary

    The world can feel like it’s sliding into something colder and meaner, and we’ve both caught ourselves wondering why so many people seem numb to it. So we turn back to the last two chapters of The Great Cosmic Mother, where the authors name the end result of patriarchal religion and patriarchal power: a profane world stripped of spirit, where bodies and the Earth get treated like objects, markets demand endless consumption, and “meaning” gets replaced with control.

    We talk through the chapter’s brutal clarity about addiction to artificial energy, the way systems train us to blame victims, and how power keeps itself alive by pitting us against each other. Then we step into the book’s answer: politics alone cannot carry us, and spirituality that ignores politics is just another escape hatch. What we actually need is a refusion of spirit and flesh, a return to the lived truth that we are connected, and a commitment to respell the stories that run our minds.

    That’s where “witchy” stops being a costume and becomes a metaphor for reclaiming imagination. We connect the dots to modern capitalism, AI anxiety, and the tech-bro dream of mechanizing everything, then bring it back to what we can do right now: make something, sing with people, take a library craft class, build tiny pockets of real community, and let creativity become a form of resistance.

    After you listen, tell us what story you’re ready to respell, then subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more magic children can find us.

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    53 min
  • 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

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    37 min
  • 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/resources-essays/paines-anti-slavery-legacy/

    Little background on the Comstock laws that affected women's access to reproductive information and birth control: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-anthony-comstocks-chastity-laws/

    Send us Fan Mail

    Credits

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    1 hr 4 min
  • 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

    Season Two Recorded at Bob's Basement Studios, Michigan

    Produced and edited by Sara Kaye Larson

    Intro/Outro Music: ‘Shifting pt. 2 (instrumental)’  by Rie Daisies

    Executive Producer Kate ML Rogers

    Season One Recorded at Troubadour Studios in Lansing, MI (now in Traverse City, MI!)

    Audio Engineer Corey DeRushia

    Edited by Rie Daisies at Nighttime Girlfriend Studio

    Leave us a voice mail

    Have some feedback? Praise? General thoughts? Want to be on the show? 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://www.bitingalltheapples.com/

    Find us on YouTube and BlueSky

    56 min

About Biting All The Apples

From the publisher's feed

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…