The Golden Thread

Before Homer, before the Torah, before Plato--there was Enheduanna. In this episode, Harmonia introduces us to the world's first recorded author: a poet, a priestess, a daughter of empire. Living in ancient Mesopotamia four thousand years ago, Enheduanna dared to do what no one before her had done--write in her own voice and sign her name. Through hymns of exile, power, and divine fury, she gave rhythm to memory and presence to history. Her words survived millennia not through conquest, but through copying--passed hand to hand across the centuries.

Harmonia joins Matilda Joslyn Gage on a gray day in New York Harbor, not on the official boats full of dignitaries but on a crowded barge of suffragists circling the new Statue of Liberty with banners that read "American women have no liberty." From that rocking deck, we trace Gage's path back to a childhood home on the Underground Railroad, where she learned that law and justice are not the same thing; through her uninvited speech at the 1852 women's rights convention; into her deep friendships (and tensions) with Stanton and Anthony; and finally to her most dangerous work, Woman, Chur