Welcome to The Waves, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and the grim side of happily ever after.

Every episode of the Waves, you get a new feminist to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds.

And today you've got me, Laura Miller, a books and culture columnist for Slate.

One of the things we're going to be talking about is fairy tales. Fairy tales like myths are the

oldest form of human storytelling, and they have always been closely linked to women. The great

19th century collectors of fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm presented them as stories for children,

stories passed on by grandmothers and

nursemaids and aunties. But today, folklorists believe that traditional stories like these

were meant for a mixed audience of adults and children. The use of fairy tales to entertain and teach

is something that has endured throughout the ages.

And there's a reason we keep getting big screen adaptations of stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.

It's not just because they've become Disney properties.

So what is it about this type of story that makes us keep coming back?

What do the new iterations have to say about how we view women? Our guest today is Kelly Link, the author of the new story

collection, White Cat, Black Dog, seven stories, each based on a particular fairy tale. I've been a huge

fan of Kelly's since reading her very first short story collection, Stranger Things

Happen, all the way back in 2001. And I adore the way she mixes myth, everyday life, and

pop culture to create something entirely new. When we get back from the break, Kelly is going to

join me from her farmhouse in Massachusetts to talk about white cat, black dog, and the fairy tales

that inspired it. Stay with us. Hey, Wave listeners.

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New episodes come out every Thursday morning.

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