unRipe - Learning to Embrace the Childless Life

When you think of hysteria, what comes to mind? Melancholia, anxiety, frigidity. It’s a problem that can be solved, says Doctor Dalrymple from the Netflix feel good movie, Hysteria.

Until 1952, female hysteria was a valid diagnosis for women exhibiting the following symptoms: insomnia, anxiety, shortness of breath, sexual desire, frigidity or lack of sexual desire, irritability, fainting, a general air of independence, raucous behaviour and even infertility. Holy cow! I must have hysteria!

In today's episode I'll talk about the first hysteric, the Queen of Hysterics Blanche Wittman, wandering uteruses, excorcisms, Freud (of course), the Salem Witch Trials, and mass hysteria including the War of the Worlds alien invasion, meowing nuns and the dancing epidemic.

And did I mention polenta poultices? Oh, and Trump...

And I'll ask if we should just retire the word.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite  podcast app including Apple and Spotify - it makes it easier for others  to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

Resolutions

Each and every year I buy a diary and I make a resolution to use it ALL YEAR. This is my year. I say that every year.

And each and every year, I will stop using it, I will even stop thinking about it, before February is though.

Because, let’s face it, resolutions are the worst way to start the year. They only lead to disappointment and “I knew its”.

Why do we even make new year’s resolutions at all, especially when we know we’ll break them? Who the hell started this most delusional of traditions?

According to Gallop, more than 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions will abandon them by mid-February. And yet we still make them, and are still shocked and disappointed when, not only have we stopped working on them, we actually forget all about them.

References:

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app including Apple and Spotify - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

It’s almost Christmas so there’s no better time of the year to have a look at the words we use once a year with abandon.

From Eggnog to Kris Kringle, Santa's Elves to Decking the Halls with Holly, where did these words, and their traditions come from?

Let’s swig on a flagon of eggnog and bring in the yuletide cheer with the inaugural Say What Christmas episode.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast  app including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

From Taxi Driver to Psycho, Ted Bundy to the kid down the road, the Peeping Tom is both a real life predatory character and box office gold.

But who was the first Peeping Tom? And who did Tom peep on?

In this episode we travel through time, movies, some very real and disturbing crimes and a very beautiful and pious naked woman.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

Do you know where the word “left” comes from? Well, in Latin, it’s Sinister, in all of its evil definitions. 

So let’s break it down. How did sinister come to mean left and why is the left sinister? 

Why does my mum think that left handers are evil? What does ancient bird divination, and the toilet habits of some cultures have to do with it? And what about the French Revolution?

In today's episode, I break down the word LEFT and its very sinister history.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app    including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

Just in case you’re wondering, I have a real weak spot for curiosities and curious people – you know, people who behave irrationally, rule breakers and general riff raff. I’m quite fond of these people. Well…

When I say “fond”, I don’t mean the – take me to your leader type of fondness but, rather,

I just want to understand what makes people behave the way they do.

And that’s why Stockholm Syndrome is this episode’s focus.

I use the term Stockholm Syndrome here and there, and while I know what it means, I didn’t actually know where it originated. For some reason I thought it had something to do with kajillionnaire heir Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army (more about that later).

And while the term originates from around the same era, it was actually an altogether different kidnapping event that led to the term being coined.

So what exactly is Stockholm Syndrome? We'll travel through the 1930s and the 1970s to find out.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app   including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

We’ve heard the word, Catfishing, and doesn’t it feel like it’s been part of the zeitgeist forever? But Catfishing, as it’s used in popular culture, is a relatively new term, from 2010, actually.

And it was coined by a documentarian.

In this episode, I look at the history of the word catfishing, and actually take a look at its very long, but hidden history that has everything to do with catfish and cod. 

So let’s deconstruct this!

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app  including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

What is up with the word Tomboy? Is it even politically correct to say it anymore? Without turning this into a gender studies episode, we’re going to learn where the word comes from, how it came to mean what it did, if it even does mean the same thing today, and the various translations because, yes, tomboys are everywhere and every country has its own nuanced definition and you may be surprised to learn that well, it’s a little more complex than sex, gender constructs and whether you wear skirts and climb trees.

So let’s deconstruct this!

Today's episode features Freud's Masculinity Complex, Calamity Jane, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel's Suzie Myerson, and I completely butcher some foreign languages. Sorry.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app  including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show.

Or find your favourite listening app HERE

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

Since the 2016 election that gave Donald Trump a platform, not to mention the presidency, the word has been everywhere. But what does it mean? Where does gaslight come from?

We hear a lot about ghosting. You know, it’s when someone ends a relationship suddenly without warning and just disappears, with no contact. Nothing.

But what about gaslighting.

According to Wiktionary, "The verb sense derives from the 1938 stage play called Gas Light, in which a husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment."

Recently, I watched the original movie from 1940, which was based on the stage play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton.

The film, besides being super dramatic in the way movies were back then – you know, close ups of crazy eyes, that sort of thing, it was actually fascinating to see where the term that we use so freely today, actually came from.

Join me as I travel through the last century to find the origins of this fascinating word.

Join me on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/saywhatthepodcast

Please share and leave us a review on your favourite podcast app including Apple - it makes it easier for others to find the show. 

Or find your favourite listening app HERE 

Sound engineering and original music by Jeff Willis. You can find his tunes on Spotify and iTunes 

Produced by Jo Vraca. You can find my books on Amazon

When you think of quarantine, what comes to mind? Leper colonies of the past? Two weeks to flatten the curve?

A hundred years ago, when leprosy was considered a public health risk, people were quarantined off for life. There was no cure for leprosy back then, and while only a few hundred people were ever recorded to have leprosy in the United States, it was claimed that a few thousand were likely to exist in hiding, to avoid a life of quarantine.

So how did quarantine get its name? And what was quarantine like before the current pandemic? I go back into ancient history to show you that, actually, nothing much has changed.

Oh, and goats. Goats definitely get a mention today!

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