About

Sweetbitter is an investigative history podcast with a focus on queer & women’s history. Each season, we explore a different corner of history, using literary works or historical figures as a starting point to discuss a broader story of erasure of people with marginalized identities. We collaborate with experts to bring these stories to a modern audience. Along with the listener, we try to untangle stories tainted by years of homophobia, colonization, and patriarchy erasing and rewriting history.

Our third season covers the Bible, and Christianity more broadly, through the lenses of feminism and queer liberation theory. Christian religious institutions have victimized and traumatized queer people and women for thousands of years, but these crimes have been justified not from the text of the Bible itself, but rather from a misogynistic, patriarchal interpretation and translation of the text. We’ll unsettle assumptions about this ancient and highly controversial text by interviewing LGBTQIA clergy, theological experts, and practicing Christians. We’ll get their take on the so-called “clobber” passages outlawing homosexuality as well as on queer Biblical love stories like David and Jonathan, Naomi and Ruth, and the Roman centurion and his partner. We’ll hear from queer Christians about what their faith means to them, and how Christianity is inherently linked to social justice. In the second half of the season, we’ll discuss the women Biblical heroes you’ve never heard of: the matriarchs, prophets, warriors, saints, and queens whose stories will change the way you see Christianity forever.