Welcome to the Ways, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and covenants real in imaginary.

Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get off our

minds, and today you've got me, Rebecca Onion, a senior editor at Slate.

Jess Zimmerman, I write about feminism, monsters, witches, and all manner of scary ladies.

Well, as my five-year-old says about witches, they are, quote, the only girl monsters,

unquote. Now, I know that's not true, as Jess, my co-hosts for today can attest,

but they are certainly the sort of the first archetypal spooky scary figures that a five-year-old

like mine would know about that are coded female. Now, as a history person, I am, of course,

really interested in how the idea of witchery adheres to various things that women do over history.

And as spooky seasons premiere month, October, winds down. We wanted to take a minute on the

waves to talk about how witches are fairing in 2022. And we're going to use it pretty silly.

I don't know what you think Jess, new movie, Hocus Pocus 2, to do it.

I have a gift for my favorite customers.

Legend has it. It's on the 16th birthday that a witch gets her powers.

Well, I have great news for your kid, because there are actually so many female coded monsters,

and I'm really interested in all of them, which is why I wanted to talk about witches with you

today. My book Women and Other Monsters is about female monsters from Greek myths,

and I also co-wrote a book called Basic Witches that's all about taking inspiration from

the cultural image of the witch, which is very relevant to Hocus Pocus. But those ideas

have in common is that we use these monstrous figures to sort of encode expectations about women

and women adjacent people. Most of those expectations are pretty constraining,

so these scary women are meant to be cautionary tales. But of course, it's more fun to read them

...