Our Pandora's Box

The blue wave has arrived. But what will it actually change for women in America?

The 2026 midterm elections brought historic Democratic victories and fresh hope for Americans looking for a different political direction. But as Our Pandora's Box host Maria Eliades reminds us, winning an election doesn't automatically change the culture that shaped the country in the first place.

In this special solo episode, Maria reflects on the election results, asks what political change really means for women's everyday lives, and what we can all do next.

Our Pandora's Box is created, hosted, and produced by Maria Eliades for Pentelic Productions.

Between political polarization, dating app fatigue, AI, economic uncertainty, and the lingering effects of the pandemic, finding love can feel more difficult than ever.

In this episode of Our Pandora's Box, host Maria Eliades talks with fourth-generation matchmaker and host of Ask a Matchmaker, Maria Avgitidis, about the state of modern dating, why politics has become such an important factor in romantic compatibility, and what it might take to build better relationships in an increasingly divided society.

Maria Avgitidis is the CEO of Agape Match, host of the Ask a Matchmaker podcast, and author of Ask a Matchmaker. Drawing on nearly two decades of professional matchmaking experience, she offers a fascinating perspective on how dating has changed from the matchmaking of her great-grandmother's time to today's world of algorithms, endless swiping, and AI dating tools.

In this episode, Maria Eliades and Matchmaker Maria discuss:

• Why political differences have become a major issue in dating and long-term compatibility
• How dating apps, AI, and social media algorithms influence our expectations of potential partners
• Why so many single Americans are open to love but aren't actively dating
• How economic instability and the pandemic have changed dating and marriage in the U.S. and Greece
• How to make first dates feel less like job interviews and more like genuine connections
• What communities and public institutions can do to create more opportunities for people to meet

Plus, Matchmaker Maria shares practical ideas for getting out into the world and meeting people.

Whether you're navigating dating apps, searching for a long-term relationship, or wondering why finding love has become so complicated, this conversation offers a hopeful perspective on connection, compatibility, and the importance of community.

Maria Avgitidis, also known as Matchmaker Maria, is a fourth-generation matchmaker, host of the Ask a Matchmaker podcast, CEO of Agape Match, co-founder of the Matchmakers Alliance, and author of Ask a Matchmaker. Her approach combines traditional matchmaking wisdom with modern research on relationships and compatibility.

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Can We Still Have Good Sex When the World Feels Terrible? with Dr. Laurie Mintz

What happens to sexual desire when you’re stressed, exhausted, worried about money, overwhelmed by politics—or simply don’t feel turned on anymore by anything?

In this episode of Our Pandora’s Box, host Maria Eliades talks with sex psychologist, author, and University of Florida emerita professor Dr. Laurie Mintz about how women can cultivate pleasure and satisfying sex lives even when the world around them doesn’t exactly make it easy.

Dr. Mintz is the author of Becoming Cliterate and A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex. She helped popularize the “orgasm gap” to describe the persistent disparity in orgasm rates between women and men during heterosexual sex. On this episode, Dr. Mintz explains why knowing more about women’s pleasure hasn’t necessarily changed what happens in the bedroom, and how deeply ingrained sexual scripts still shape what we think “real sex” is supposed to look like.

Maria and Dr. Mintz also talk about responsive desire versus spontaneous desire and why not feeling turned on constantly doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your sex drive. Sometimes desire comes after sexual activity begins rather than before it—and understanding that can completely change how we think about libido in long-term relationships. Maria and Dr. Mintz also discuss the Cornell 7 case.

Together, they discuss:

• How stress, political anxiety, economic worries, depression, and exhaustion can affect sexual desire
• The difference between responsive and spontaneous desire
• Why losing spontaneous desire doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong in your relationship
• The orgasm gap and why heterosexual sexual scripts still prioritize penetration and male pleasure
• Why the clitoris—and understanding female sexual anatomy—matters for orgasm and sexual satisfaction
• What to do when a doctor dismisses sexual pain, pelvic pain, perimenopause symptoms, or other sexual health concerns
• When pelvic floor physical therapy, sexual medicine, or sex therapy may help
• How pregnancy, lactation, parenting, and exhaustion can affect postpartum sexuality
• Why our sexual preferences can change over the course of our lives
• When some women report having their best sex
• What male partners can do to help create better sex for women
• How vibrators, communication, mindfulness, and expanding your definition of sex can increase pleasure
• Why making room for pleasure can matter even—and perhaps especially—during frightening or politically difficult times

Content note: This episode includes discussion of rape, sexual assault, rape culture, and sexual violence.

About Dr. Laurie Mintz

Dr. Laurie Mintz is a psychologist, sex therapist, author, speaker, and Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Florida. She is the author of Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters—and How to Get It and A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex. Her forthcoming book, Pursue Your Pleasure (June 8, 2027), explores how to use self discovery and communication to live your most erotic life both in and out of the bedroom.

Our Pandora’s Box is a Pentelic Productions podcast hosted, created, produced, and edited by Maria Eliades. Subscribe to the Our Pandora's Box Substack for episode resources and to continue the conversation.

How to Make and Keep Friends as an Adult

Why does making friends as an adult feel so much harder than it did in college or your early 20s, and what actually helps?

In Part 2 of our Friendship in America series, Maria Eliades talks with Alexandra Friedman, founder of Connection Feast, about adult friendship, loneliness, making new friends, keeping old ones, and what healthy friendships actually look and feel like.

After moving back to Seattle and struggling to build meaningful friendships, Alex started hosting structured dinners for strangers. Those gatherings eventually grew into Connection Feast, a company focused on helping adults build deeper connections and stronger social skills.

In this episode, Maria and Alexandra talk about why just meeting more people doesn’t always lead to the friendships we want, why friendships aren't convenient, and why finding the right people may mean leaning harder into the things that make you just a bit weird.

They also discuss:

• Why people can feel lonely even when they have friends or romantic partners
• How to make friends as an adult when you’re starting over in a new city
• Why the places we choose to meet people matter
• How many times to initiate activities before giving up
• Why “Hey, how are you?” can sometimes make reconnecting harder
• Why friendship breakups can hurt as much as romantic breakups
• How friendships change through marriage, parenthood, moves, and other life transitions

Plus, Alex answers a listener question about how to tell if a friendship has red flags, especially when disagreements happen.

If you’ve ever wondered how to make friends as an adult, how to keep friendships alive through life changes, or how to know if a friendship is worth repairing, this episode is for you.

About Alexandra Friedman

Alexandra Friedman is a Friendship and Connection Coach, community builder, and founder of Connection Feast, a social wellness company helping adults and people-focused companies build deeper friendships and strong social skills. Since 2018 she has guided close to 3,000 people through workshops, events, and coaching experiences that teach adults how to move past small talk, create meaningful relationships, and build a more connected life.

Our Pandora’s Box is a podcast for women in their late 20s (and late 20s at heart) who want to live life on their own terms.

Subscribe to the Our Pandora’s Box Substack and join the conversation at ourpandorasbox.substack.com.

Our Pandora’s Box is taking a short mid-season break.

We’re six episodes into Season 1, with four more conversations still to come on friendship, sex and eroticism, dating and relationships, and reproductive health and self-advocacy.

The podcast returns Thursday, October 1 with Part 2 of our Friendship in America series, featuring Alexandra Friedman, founder of Connection Feast and a Seattle-based friendship coach. Maria and Alexandra talk about adult friendship, building deeper connection, and some of the practical skills that can help us become better friends.

The final stretch of Season 1 will also include conversations about sex, eroticism, modern dating, relationships, and how women can better understand and advocate for their reproductive health.

If you’re attending Podcast Movement in New York City on September 17 or 18, Maria will be there and would love to meet listeners and fellow podcasters.

Follow Our Pandora’s Box so you don’t miss the return on October 1.

In the meantime, remember to stay hopeful and stay curious.

Are we actually in a friendship crisis—or is something more complicated happening?

Americans have been hearing about a “loneliness epidemic” for years. But research from The American Friendship Project suggests that most Americans do have friends. So what's happening in this mismatch of data and perceptions?

To find out, in this episode Maria talks with Dr. Natalie Pennington, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University and co-lead of the American Friendship Project, about what the research actually tells us about friendship in the U.S., and how to make and maintain meaningful friendships as an adult.

They explore why adult friendships take time to build, how vulnerability creates closeness, and why the pandemic, moving, and the decline of third places can make maintaining a social life harder. They also tackle how technology has changed friendship: when it’s okay to let an old friendship go, whether texting is actually good for connection, where voice notes fit, and what AI can—and can’t—offer as a substitute for human friendship.

This is Part 1 of Our Pandora’s Box’s two-part exploration of friendship and loneliness in America. Join us for Part 2 in two weeks as Maria talks with friendship coach and Connection Feast creator Alexandra Friedman about the practical work of making friends and building community.

For show resources, head over to the Substack.

Can you be a liberal or progressive woman and still be religious in the United States today?

As conservative, tradition-seeking men increasingly turn to Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism—and a hypermasculine online religious culture grows alongside them—women who grew up in these traditions can find themselves asking a very different question: Is there still a place here for us?

Host Maria Eliades talks with Orthodox theologian Rachel Contos about feminism, faith, the rise of the “Orthobro,” and what happens when women refuse to let conservative religious movements define what their faith is allowed to look like.

Rachel shares her own complicated journey from nearly leaving the Orthodox Church to pursuing a PhD in theology and becoming an outspoken advocate for women and queer people in the Church. Together, Maria and Rachel explore why some disaffected men are drawn to a vision of Christianity built around masculinity and tradition, how churches respond to social change, the fight over women’s roles in Orthodox Christianity, and why remaining inside an imperfect institution can itself become an act of resistance.

And ultimately, Rachel offers a different way to think about faith: you can question your religious tradition, argue with it, take a break from it—and still refuse to let someone else take away something that sustains you.

What does it actually take to build both a meaningful career and a family?

This isn't an episode to convince you whether to have children or not. It's about understanding what's actually required to build both a meaningful career and a family in today's world.

Our Pandora's Box host, Maria Eliades, speaks with humanitarian and development expert Merit Hietanen, author of The Humanitarian Parent, about the realities of pursuing a meaningful career while raising children—and why the conversation is bigger than individual choices.

Drawing on years of humanitarian work and extensive research, Merit explains why balancing work and family depends less on personal sacrifice than on workplace culture, labor rights, supportive partners, community, and public policy.

Together, they discuss:

• Why "having it all" may be the wrong question.
• The hidden support systems behind successful careers.
• Motherhood in demanding professions.
• Caregiving, labor rights, and workplace culture.
• What women in their 20s and 30s should consider as they think about family and career.

Whether you're planning to become a parent, have decided not to, or are still figuring it out, this episode offers a thoughtful perspective on one of the defining questions of modern adulthood.

Resources & Links

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Why are women still paid less than men? Award-winning financial journalist and The Ambition Penalty author Stefanie O'Connell joins Maria Eliades to unpack the hidden systems behind the gender pay gap, burnout, and women's financial inequality. Together, they explore why working harder isn't always enough—and what women can do individually and collectively to build greater financial freedom and lasting change.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the gender pay gap is about more than salary
• The hidden barriers that continue to hold women back at work
• What the girlboss and the tradwife have in common
• Why burnout is often a problem with the environment—not the individual
• Practical ways to build financial security, community, and systemic change

Resources & Links

• Subscribe to the Our Pandora's Box Substack for resources from this episode and additional reading.
• Follow Our Pandora's Box for new episodes every other week.

Fashion educator and marketing expert Catherine Trotin explores how fashion history, social media, and culture shape what we wear—and how you can develop a personal style that feels truly yours.

In Episode 2 of Our Pandora's Box, your elder millennial sister host, Maria Eliades, sits down with My Fashion Stories Box host Catherine Trotin to unpack why even what we wear is not outside of the influence of politics.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Whether personal style can still be original in the age of TikTok and social media
• The connection between history, politics, and what we wear
• Their own stories about navigating fashion in Moscow, Istanbul, France, and the U.S.
• How to develop a personal style that reflects who you are instead of simply following trends

Whether you're passionate about fashion, curious about history, or trying to build a wardrobe that feels more like you, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at how style becomes part of the stories we tell about ourselves.

Resources & Links

Subscribe to the Our Pandora's Box Substack for episode resources, reflections, and behind-the-scenes content.

Follow Our Pandora's Box for new episodes every other week.