In Episode 14, we spotlight the voices of Iranian women who refused to be silenced. From childhood friendships tested by revolution to secret book clubs and international human rights battles, these stories reveal the strength it takes to speak — and the risks of being heard.
Featuring The Lion Women of Tehran, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Until We Are Free by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, this episode traces the intersection of gender, power, and resistance in modern Iran.
In this Episode 13, we travel through kitchens, across borders, and into the heart of cultural memory. We begin with The Hundred-Foot Journey, a novel that simmers with tension, flavor, and the pull between tradition and reinvention. Then we dive into Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain — equal parts raw confession and culinary manifesto. Finally, we explore Salt: A World History, uncovering how a single ingredient has seasoned empires, economies, and human survival itself.
In Episode 12, we examine the dangers of viewing global crises from a distance. The Poisonwood Bible immerses us in the Congo, while King Leopold’s Ghost and Cobalt Red expose the extractive systems still at play.
Without Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, there may be no legacy. In this episode, we follow her story in The Secret Life of Sunflowers, then trace the real letters and legacy through Vincent and Theo and Portrait of Dr. Gachet.
In post-war Madrid, silence was survival. The Fountains of Silence follows Ana and Daniel—two lives intersecting in a city haunted by secrets. Their story opens a window into the hidden world of Franco’s Spain. Paired with testimonies of stolen children and the fight to recover truth, this episode explores how fear rewrites memory—and how some voices refuse to be buried.
What happens when political cunning, family ambition, and personal charisma converge? We trace the legacy of Cesare Borgia—son of the infamous Pope Rodrigo Borgia, also known as Alexander VI—and the ideas that shaped modern power. Through Mario Puzo’s sweeping historical novel and the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, we explore how the Renaissance gave birth to a brutal, brilliant new understanding of leadership that still echoes in today’s world.
From the devastation of the Johnstown Flood to modern-day disaster zones, this episode explores how ordinary people step forward in extraordinary times. Through fiction, biography, and real-world response, we trace the legacy of service—from the founding of the American Red Cross by Clara Barton to José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen. What compels someone to serve when everything is falling apart—and what does that choice leave behind?
What does it mean to remember when remembering itself is an act of defiance? This episode traces Ukrainian history from the Holodomor to the siege of Mariupol, exploring how people resist erasure not just by surviving—but by refusing silence. Through fiction, history, and testimony, we examine how memory endures when food, freedom, and truth are under attack—and why the voices that remain must be heard.
What happens when memory fails—and when silence conceals guilt? In this episode, we explore The Reader by Bernhard Schlink alongside real accounts of Nazi women in Lethal Women and Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, tracing the blurred lines between complicity, responsibility, and justice.
In Episode 5 of Gateway Books by Crestance, we remember the Mirabal sisters—symbols of courage under dictatorship. Through Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, their letters, and Dedé Mirabal’s memoir Alive in Their Garden, we explore love, resistance, and sacrifice in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo’s brutal regime. Their legacy lives on in the fight for justice and truth.
In Episode 4 of Gateway Books by Crestance, we uncover the deadly consequences of fear and accusation during Norway’s 17th-century witch trials. Through The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, the Malleus Maleficarum, and The Witches of Vardø by Ingrid Hale, we examine how hysteria, power, and silence led to tragedy—and how remembering these stories gives voice to those who were never heard.
In Episode 3 of Gateway Books by Crestance, we follow Frankie, a young nurse in Vietnam, in Kristin Hannah’s The Women, and uncover the real stories behind the era with The Movement by Clara Bingham and An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin. From war to protest to personal reckoning, this episode explores how the 60s and 70s reshaped a generation—and how those echoes still reach us today.
In Episode 2 of Gateway Books by Crestance, we journey through love, loss, and legacy with The Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal Malhotra. Alongside it, we explore the real stories of Partition through her nonfiction works Remnants of Partition and Remnants of a Separation. Fiction and history intertwine to reveal how memories—and the objects that hold them—endure across generations.
In Episode 1, we explore the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley through Her Lost Words, pairing fiction with the real writings that shaped feminism and gothic literature. From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to Frankenstein, this episode traces a legacy of bold ideas passed from mother to daughter.