The Most Badass Dragon Slayers in History

Picture a dragon and its dragon slayer. What do you imagine? It's likely going to be a giant, scaly, fire-breathing beast and a rugged knight with a massive sword. However, throughout history we have amazing myths of women dragon slayers. What are the ancient origins of the dragon? How do women dragon slayers differ from their male counterparts? And what genitals do medieval dragons have?! Joining Kate today is historian and author Jasmine Elmer, to get to know these historical stories and the reasons behind them. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters! It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Welcome back. Hello! It is just so wonderful to have you back once again. But before we can go any further, I think you know what's coming. I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adult things, and adults who are coming around, so this is news to an adult too. Oh my god, thank god, we've got through that! Do you feel safer? I feel safer. Right, let's crack on.

• 1:02Kate Lister?

  Oh, hello, betwixters! We are in 15th century Japan, and we've been invited out on a little boat trip. How quaint! Except it's not, because every year, a young woman is offered up to a dragon who lives beneath the waves. Or did I not mention the dragon and the human sacrifice bit? Yeah, all right, maybe it's not quite so quaint. Today's sacrifice, though, doesn't seem particularly interested in dying. In fact, she's much more interested in slaying and kicking ass. Her name is Tokyo, and you may be shocked to learn that she is in good company with other women dragon slayers in history. Well, who are they, and what are their stories? Let's get this dragon slayed and find out more.

• 2:08Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Hands up, who amongst us has pictured themselves having a starring role in Game of Thrones? That can't just be me. It can't, surely. In fact, if any of the producers of House of the Dragon are still recruiting for, let's say, I dunno, Daenerys's northern cousin, then look no further, I am willing. But what stories from history have women taming and even slaying the dragon? Today, I'm joined by the historian and author Jasmine Elmer, who's written an entire book about them. Swords are ready, everyone, let's do this.

• 2:51Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Jasmine Elmer, how are you doing babes?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Woo, I was wondering, you're gonna put like a sound effect on top where you're like, the people are cheering, is that gonna go on? Or do I do it myself?

• 3:03Kate Lister?

  We can do, we can do. Hang on, look, we'll do some post-editing magic now. Cue applause.

• 3:12Kate Lister?

  There it is.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Okay. If that doesn't happen, that is gonna be so bad.

• 3:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah, don't leave me hanging.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Don't do a solitary clap, like one person just clapping gently, that would just do me in.

• 3:24Kate Lister?

  That's, that's, an editor can be very, very mean there, and we will, we will be having words.

• 3:30Kate Lister?

  Well, it's fabulous to have you back, how've you been?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Great, thank you, I love coming on here, I could probably hang out here all day, probably like nearly all of your listeners, it's just such a fun place.

• 3:39Kate Lister?

  Well, it's, it's fun because you're back to talk about dragons, because your latest book, you've, you've just suddenly, dragons, except I say you've suddenly gone dragons, but your PhD was in dragons.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Well, do you know what, I didn't, spoiler, I did half a PhD, I didn't finish it, so...

• 3:54Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay. So right.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  So I'm not, I'm not a doctor, Jasmine Elmer. I'm a, what do I, can I just be a D Jasmine Elmer?

• 4:00Kate Lister?

  Can be a D? Yeah, you're me. Yeah, you can, you can, but the big D. That's, that's fine.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I did half of a PhD and then stopped to write these books. So I don't know. I feel like I should just be given a doctorate anyway. Cause I just changed tact and wrote books for normal people, not academics.

• 4:15Kate Lister?

  I think that I'm, I'm quite happy to call you doctor on those grounds. That's, that's fine.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  If you could bestow it upon me with a certificate from the, the University of Cape List.

• 4:23Kate Lister?

  I have a post-it note. Absolutely.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Wonderful. Yeah. Doing gold writing and then it'll be real and I can show it to people.

• 4:30Kate Lister?

  There we go. You just need the confidence to pull it off. That's, that's all you need.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  So yes, I don't have a PhD. However, I have multiple, multiple, multiple hours of academic study on dragons that we wouldn't call a PhD. But yes, I do.

• 4:43Kate Lister?

  And now you have a book on dragons. Let's give it its full title. Hang on. Slay, Ancient Legends of Female Slayers and the Hidden Mythology of Dragons.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yep. Do you like it?

• 4:53Kate Lister?

  I do like that. That's a very, very good title. I like it. Cause I love, I love the double play on slay.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I had to do that. It came into my brain and I thought, can we be this silly? And I thought, yes, we can. Can we make serious comments and be silly? I was like, yeah, I mean, it's fine, isn't it? We'll make a career of it.

• 5:08Kate Lister?

  Yes, we can. So why dragons, Jasmine? What's the attraction? I mean, apart, you know, obviously they're very cool, but apart, what attracts you to dragons?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Such a, such a good question. Do you know what? I didn't know anything about dragons until I did my masters as an adult in Plastics and Ancient History. And I was like, honestly, I was looking down the course list and I thought, oh, not, not more Roman emperors. No dissing the Roman emperors, but I've been doing that for 20 odd years. I'm like, okay, more Roman emperors. Okay. Or slavery in ancient Greece. None of, all these topics are fine, but I had been in them for years and then I saw dragons. And I thought, that's different. I'll give that a crack. And I'd already done a lot of mythology, but honestly, it's when I started to study them. I just thought, why are they so much more than I thought they were?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Why are they so like layered in their meaning? Why are they so prolific in, in world cultures and also throughout history? And they sort of became like this, like obsession. I was like, hang on a minute. I need to know why. I need to know why. But also from a global question, because we all know that like dragons come from so many cultures. And I just thought. Mythology does that, but like in this, in this particular way with just like with dragons, it's just something else. It's his own entity. And I just thought there's something in that. Um, a bit like how obsessed with sex you are. I just got obsessed with dragons.

• 6:32Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, that's fair, isn't it? That's, that's fair.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe yours is from personal experience. I haven't really got any personal experience with dragons.

• 6:41Kate Lister?

  Mine, mine's just from the fact that I've never been laid properly.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Okay, and you just needed to know the history of that.

• 6:46Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it's just a mass wave of sexual frustration that's, that's happening here. I don't think you have dragon frustration though.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Oh, but you know what? Sometimes it would be cool to just like be going out for the school run and then there's this little dragon just floating around. But I mean.

• 7:02Kate Lister?

  As a, as a, as a real starter question then, but it's probably actually quite, it's one of those ones that's actually quite tricky. What is a dragon?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a good question. I mean, the, the, the definition is going to change depending on who you want to ask really because the dragon, like I've just already described, is fluid across many, you know, kind of cultures. So it's hard to choose a de- a definition that relates to the physical characteristics because of that. Because it has so, I know we all want to say, oh, it's got wings and it breathes fire and it's a bit scaly and it might fly and it might, you know. But I think actually a better definition is kind of like, you can use that loosely, but also it's about the behaviour. You know, it's a kind of like a dragon's behaviour is often to do with marauding or guarding.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  As well as these, I mean, if you like broadly serpentine, um, scaly things, you can put those in more loosely. But that's, that's kind of, dragons are associated with really kind of what they're doing rather than what they look like, I think is a better definition.

• 8:10Kate Lister?

  Are they always marauding?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  No, they're not always marauding. I think it's like there are different types, different types, but different, um, I guess they display different personalities. Sounds like a weird way to describe them. But yeah, they do, they do different things in different cultures. So marauding is one that we, I think, associate a lot with the Western dragon, the medieval dragon. They can often maraud, cause havoc for people. And you get that in the classical world as well. And you can trace that kind of very, like I said, Western Eurocentric view, like all the way through, really, all the way back. But when you look at Eastern dragons, it's a different situation. They're like more connected to like luck and prosperity. And like rivers and natural, natural spaces like that. So, you know, like they're not always that.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  And that's what makes them, I think, actually kind of hard to define. And part of that, I think the study should be about what that, what, what we want to do with definitions of dragons. So I think that's an open question. I think it's still going on really, and it will get different answers from a different person each time.

• 9:11Kate Lister?

  I bet Game of Thrones has really done a number on dragon studies, maybe in, maybe in a fabulous way, but like that was a global show, the impact of it, love it or hate it, it cannot be underestimated how influential that show is. A piece of research that I was doing years ago is how Game of Thrones is rewriting medieval history for younger audiences. And I noticed that because I used to teach medieval studies and then suddenly everyone was coming into the class thinking that it was going to be like Game of Thrones. And it was like, it was actually monks. It was mostly monks writing. I'm so sorry. It's, it's like religious texts and like monks writing about stuff and, and everyone wanted it to be, and I was like, my God.

• 9:53Kate Lister?

  Like Game of Thrones is now rewriting what people think of as medieval history and popular culture. Are they doing that with dragons as well? Is now everyone's thought of a dragon, do they immediately go?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, that's partly why the book is a global story of dragons, because we just have this such heavy iconography around that medieval looking dragon, which is wicked. Like, I love it. It's cool. The stories behind it are brilliant. Like it's, it's a real awesome part of our culture. Heritage, but then we're missing out on, like I said, all this fluidity and the nuance and the breadth of dragon myth. And that that's what I was like trying to change with this book, because you can buy quite a lot of books around dragons in the West. And then you separately can buy dragons on books in the East, but it's it's not, you don't really find many that brought bring them together.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a bad thing. I mean, I love Game of Thrones and fantasy and all this stuff like I don't love fantasy, but I do love. I do quite like Game of Thrones, but that's because I got forced to watch it by my husband. I resisted for years. He was well into it and then I started watching, I thought, oh, no, but I like it, but Game of Thrones is good. So I digress, but the thing is that I think that it's a good thing that dragons are popular. And I think people are asking more questions right now because they are now seeing the dragon everywhere in these like more. You know, pop culture and kind of, you know, places, the inquisitive among us are going, hang on a sec, I want to know more about that. What does it really mean? What's actually about?

• 11:19Kate Lister?

  Have we always believed in dragons? Can you trace this belief like right back to the the earliest writing and mythology?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, next question.

• 11:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, I thought I thought you were gonna say, no, like, they didn't exist before the 16th century or something, but like they they go right back.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  No, no, they're they're they're very, very, very ancient. So you have dragons in like ancient Mesopotamia. You know, one of our, you know, what oldest known civilizations, uh, stories of Tiamat, uh, Marduk. You have these primordial like dragon like beings there and they're actually like the, I don't want to keep saying these like the mother of dragons and to use all this stuff. But they are like the origin stories of like the dragons that we especially we inherit in the West. So, yeah, you have, uh, the Nagas are the ancient Indian dragons. They've been around for god knows how long, you know. We're talking, you know, six thousand, seven thousand years B C that we can trace these dragons in iconography and and in.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Later kind of epic, uh, tales. So it is as pretty much as old as our mythology goes.

• 12:24Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 12:26Kate Lister?

  I'm gonna ask a question, I was probably gonna make me sound like an idiot or a genius, I'm not sure, but were dragons, were dragons real? I've got to ask the question because they crop up independently, it seems, in every culture around the world and they go back, they're some of the oldest mythologies that we've got. Is there any, could it possibly have been a dinosaur?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, that's

• 12:44Kate Lister?

  That's the temptation, isn't it?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Maybe it's not, that's smart, that's smart. So there's two separate questions. Did they think they were real? And are they actually real? Are two different questions to answer. Did they think they, they were real? Yeah, sometimes they really did. And I think it's very hard to know what, I'm gonna give him like a really boring name, John, he wouldn't have been John in ancient Greece, right? But he's, he's knocking around. What does he really believe really about this mythology that he's like, you know, kind of immersed in? I can't answer that question for you, right? But what I can say is that there's a lot of evidence about people believing that they're real physical creatures because in various points in history, for example, in the medieval period, you could buy like dragon's blood, you could actually buy it. So they clearly believed, like took various ailments, you know?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So they clearly believed you could physically get bits of dragon from somewhere, right? And so, you know, you get, and then like ancient Greece and Rome, you get dragons mentioned among like normal animals. So like, they clearly think they're real. Are they actually real? I'm sorry, but no, don't be sad. But I do think, but, but what's really interesting is like, okay, though, Jazz, what about dinosaurs? Really good point. So Adrian Mayall wrote a really good book about this, called The First Fossil Hunters. And it's this idea that we found where dragon myth seems to be the most prolific are also places that are reasonably high kind of earthquake zones, a lot of seismic activity, and therefore suggesting that a lot of fossils were therefore like, you know, unearthed as

• 14:13Speaker 01

  they were, as the ground was moving. And then that meant that they found these giant fossils and were like, oh, what's that got to be? And they imagined, they imagined a dragon. And let's not lie, a dragon looks like a dinosaur. They're not, they're not far away from each other. They're, they're reptilian style things, right?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Um. So that's plausible. That's, that's really plausible. And then the other sort of like school of thought is that actually the reason we have them all over the world and that people believed in them is because we have an inherent psychological fear of the snake. Um. And all, all dragon stories really come from snakes. And that's the first thing to kind of say about it. People are like, what? But it really is. The first dragons look more snake-like than anything else. Uh. And it's like, you know, we have this inherent phobia of, of certain creatures, right? Like a, like if you sit, you'd never, we don't have that many snakes in the UK, but I certainly know to keep away from it, right? So it's almost like this inherent fear that we then project onto the mythology. And that's what a lot of monster myth is actually

• 15:11Speaker 01

  about anyway. It's about an inner fear that we're projecting. So it's probably not either or, is it? It's going to be a combination of those sorts of things.

• 15:29Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Jasmine after this short break.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  In a world where swords were sharp.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Me, Matt Lewis.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  And me, Dr Eleanor Yanaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:18Kate Lister?

  Oh, I was kind of hoping there that you'd go, yeah, they definitely existed. That would have been a hell of a mic drop moment. Although, like, thinking about it, like, I would classify a dinosaur as, as, as a dragon.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Well, that's a question. I mean, like, if we believe the theory that a, a, a dragon is really born, it's a story born of dinosaurs, and they really existed, because obviously they really existed. We don't believe in sort of mad theories that they didn't.

• 16:42Kate Lister?

  And that and that means that that means that like Jurassic Park is basically a modern dinosaur myth.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Why not? But exactly, but yeah, but then then they are real. They're just didn't they're just not called dragons. They're just called dinosaurs to us.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  In that sense, yeah, why not? Like, it's not it's not that it's it's not quite what we think it is, but sure. Or a lot of myth has a kernel of truth to it. People always think, oh, what a nice story and they move on. But nearly all myth is an expression of our our human interaction with this world. So like that and that's a real that's real. Our interaction with the world is real. So that makes sense that there is an aspect of reality in this. Yeah.

• 17:22Kate Lister?

  And of course, the other thing that is very important and central to the the dragon myth, and certainly to your book, is that, yeah, it's a big, big scary monster. And it seems undefeatable, but then a hero emerges. Ba ba bom. Somebody has to slay the dragon.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 17:39Kate Lister?

  And it's always men, is it?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Well, here's a spoiler alert. Are we ready? I need another sound effect.

• 17:48Kate Lister?

  Drum roll, please.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, we think it's a man, don't we?

• 17:54Kate Lister?

  We do. That's the image. That's the image that there's a young lass, she's tied to a stake, she's ever so upset the dragon's going to come and get her when all of a sudden here comes George.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  On his lovely steed.

• 18:05Kate Lister?

  On his steed, yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And then everything's fine. I mean, that's such a well-trodden tale in our minds that, I mean, I remember doing it at school. I don't know if you remember doing it at school, like weirdly, like to death at school. I don't know how much I learned about it, but it felt like it was every five minutes because it was just so strong in my psyche, this story. Um, and so much part of our English identity, the St. George legend. Um, that I feel like we just think it's a man, but the spoiler alert is no, no, no, no, no. There are examples of women too.

• 18:40Kate Lister?

  And this is what your new book's about, isn't it? It's about the the the women who are slaying dragons, which is such a a a subversion of that really iconic myth of of the man who slays the dragon and saves the girl. Well, the girl actually saves herself.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or sometimes saves the man.

• 18:57Kate Lister?

  I like that even better. I love the idea of just a young lass just picking him up like, like sweeping him up in her arms going, it's all right, Dave, don't worry, I'm here.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is the cool, cool thing. Like, when I first came across dragon stories, I couldn't really believe that there weren't any focus really on, on the female slayers. There are some scholars that have written about, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I've discovered something brand new. There are a couple of scholars that have written about this, but certainly not brought together global tales of female slayers. And there isn't a book out there that focuses on female slayers at all. So this is like, I'm gonna call it groundbreaking. Can I get away with that?

• 19:34Kate Lister?

  You can absolutely, yes.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and also there's, there's so much interesting stuff about female slayers, because why they slay is a really interesting question. Because why do you think a man slays?

• 19:45Kate Lister?

  Well, they normally do it to rescue the maiden, but sort of, I guess, why do things, they're normally like, saving, it's the hero saving the town, isn't it?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's always like this quite ego, like male, masculine, egoic, like pursuit of like glory.

• 19:59Kate Lister?

  Get the monster.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  I'll sort it, don't worry. And that has really ancient origins. It's, you know, Joseph Campbell talks about this, the heroic cycle, which comes from the ancient world, which is bloke does stuff.

• 20:11Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Like, bloke kills things, overcomes challenges, bloke might go to the underworld, bloke comes back enlightened, yay. And we have this, like, that's why it's so like, trodden in our minds, so like ingrained in our minds, because it's just, that motif is replicated all over the place. But when women kill dragons, they do it for, they do it for different reasons. And those reasons.

• 20:34Kate Lister?

  Perimenopause.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  That's it. Let's leave, let's leave it there for today. Do you know what? Do you know what? I would love it if I had found a perimenopausal woman slaying a dragon.

• 20:46Kate Lister?

  That would be so much fun, just a woman who's fucking pissed off. Just stop making so much bloody noise!

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, just because it was pissing her off. That, oh, do you know what? That might, do you know what? If my publisher was listening, I think that might be the next retelling that needs to happen.

• 20:59Kate Lister?

  That's the next one. No, that's me being very silly. Why? Why do women slay dragons?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a lot of reasons, but nearly the reasons are selfless, not selfish. So they tend to, in all the stories I have, I have four stories that I go into in the book. So they're for retelling. So you really get immersed in the story, right? And all of them do go and slay this dragon, overpower a dragon to help someone else or for faith or something inside themselves that they want to reclaim.

• 21:38Kate Lister?

  Right. So it's, it's less about like, you know,

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Showing off.

• 21:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's less about like, oh, look at my muscles, like how, you know, strong I am, everyone worshiped me. And it's more, um, honestly, I think real shit, real shit, like real shit that we care about. Like you, if I said to you, Kate, you need to go slay a dragon, right? And you'd be like, yeah, exactly. Also, praying menopause can't be bothered for a start.

• 22:03Kate Lister?

  Can't be bothered.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  But if you can get over, can't be bothered, it's too hot right now as well. I'm not doing that.

• 22:08Kate Lister?

  It is hot.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  So all of that, let's get over those for a minute. But the genuine, if I was going to ask you to do something that bloody hard and that really scary, you'd have to have a good reason. And what reason would you choose? You would choose probably love of someone else. You want to, you want to save someone, you want to, you want to help someone. Like, it's got to be something like deeply emotive in you that makes you do it.

• 22:28Kate Lister?

  I can see why other people would do that, yes.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Oh, he's such a lovely person, Kate.

• 22:36Kate Lister?

  Everyone thinks I'm really nice and I'm, I'm absolutely not at all. No, that's, that's not true. If anybody threatened my niece or my nephew, I would, I would go riding in.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  There you go. So your niece and nephews have been held by a dragon and you've got to go and get them. No one else is doing it.

• 22:51Kate Lister?

  Right. Okay. So my niece I'd rescue, my nephew I'd rescue. And there is one nephew that I'd want to know what he'd done to the dragon first.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Okay, fair enough. You could have that. That could be part of your quest.

• 23:00Kate Lister?

  Right. Okay, fine.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  So the point is that these women don't do it for these kind of like, um, you know, this recognition. It's like global fame, recognition or, you know, men don't. Always do that as well, but they do it because they need, they have this, this masculine need to impose control over the monstrous. So it's not all just ego, you know, but women have much more, I think honestly, more down to earth and relatable reasons. And that's what really hit me when I, when I wrote these stories. I was like, wow, they, I could relate to this. I, I mean, I'm not going to go slay a dragon, but I, I do, I could relate to these aspects of their tales. They felt really real to me, really, really like, kind of like part of a woman's journey.

• 23:43Kate Lister?

  That's, it's an interesting trope actually, that we still get today when it comes to like the women's stories, like in films and in literature, is their motivations for being quote unquote heroic are normally like this kind of primal instincts. It's sort of like that, that almost that like mother mythology of like, you know, you've woken the mama bear now and she's cross. It's that kind of, it was like Ripley in Aliens, like she's not doing it because she wants to be famous. She's doing it because she needs to like save all of these people.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:13Kate Lister?

  It's like it's, we're still doing it. But give me an example. So tell me about, is it Margaret of Antioch?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's one of my people. So the other three sort of, I think I'd, I'd see more themes that connect to the other, but she's kind of a standalone. I quite, I like, I kind of love that about her. So she is a young woman from Antioch, which is kind of like, you know, Turkey Syria border. And she grew up without her father. She lived out in the sticks with a, a nurse, as you do, right? Um, and her father was a pagan, so that's why she was kind of taken away. And she became a devout Christian under this kind of like, you know, leadership of this nurse, this sort of like, you know, this being brought up by this woman. And then as she sort of enters, and a lot of these stories again, again, are about the, um, kind of entering puberty and growing up as a woman

• 24:59Speaker 01

  and that threshold as well. There's a lot that goes on in that area and in terms of time. And so she goes to Antioch one day for like the first time and the Roman governor Alibius sees her and falls in love with her and says, Let's get married, you know, come with me. And she goes, no, I won't because I'm Christian and you're pagan. And he was like, well, you need to convert to paganism or I'm going to torture you. And she goes.

• 25:23Kate Lister?

  Oh, he sounds lovely.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  He is the guy you swipe left on or right? Left is the bad one. Right is, which one is it?

• 25:31Kate Lister?

  Uh, swipe right, I think is if, yeah, swipe left if you don't like somebody.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  So it's that one. Get rid of him.

• 25:36Kate Lister?

  Yeah, okay.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  He sucks. So he really super sucks. So she refuses and he keeps her in a prison and tortures her. And so what, what Margaret does then, she's being tortured and because of her devout faith, she says to God, I want you to manifest this evil in a physical form in front of me so I can see the thing I'm battling. Cause she just, you know, she's being tortured and it's this sort of like, you know, kind of um ethereal weird thing going on around her. So the devil comes in the form of a dragon. And she sees it and it swallows her whole. And inside its stomach, she makes the sign of the cross and she believes deeply in her faith to overcome this dragon.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  And then she bursts out of its stomach or she's vomited up, whichever version you fancy.

• 26:26Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Um, so she sort of, her weapon against the dragon is faith. And that's the other cool thing about these women. Some of them you do use swords, some of them use things like this, but some of them also just use the power of their presence, the power of their beliefs.

• 26:40Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  So she uses the power of her belief. I mean, very much in that very hagiographical, like saintly style. She uses her faith to overcome something. So then it disappears because she's overcome it. Um, she is then still tortured and eventually killed by a librius. Because she's a saint, so she has to be like, you know, this has to happen.

• 26:59Kate Lister?

  Oh, oh, all that effort.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And she becomes the patron saint of women in childbirth and pregnancy. And so actually the thing about her throughout history, although that is obviously a saintly tale, so you know, is it true? Is it not? You know, leave that open for you. But what kind of happens throughout history, she becomes this huge figure, probably bigger than St. George. Were shipped in more places. There are about 250 churches in the UK alone named after Margaret, Saint Margaret.

• 27:27Kate Lister?

  Oh, she's a big deal then.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  She's a massive deal. And the reason we don't know about her as much today is because in 1969, the Vatican took her off the list of accepted saints. And they do that because they go like historically research and see if they can actually corroborate the story of a saint. And if they don't quite make the mark, they knock them off. So that's why we don't hear as much about Saint Margaret today. But she was more popular, almost certainly more popular than Saint George, historically speaking.

• 27:55Kate Lister?

  And killed at least one dragon that we know of.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Killed that dragon.

• 27:59Kate Lister?

  Body count of one.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. But I mean, because, you know.

• 28:02Kate Lister?

  It's impressive though.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It is. But also using no weapons, just using, using her deep faith. And this is what I mean about the way that women approach the dragon. So we know that, you know, that's more, I mean, obviously, Saint George uses his faith in other ways as well. But then he then kills the dragon a bit later on in the story. But she just uses her faith. So I think that women use a different type of power. Obviously, that's a very Christian story. So it has like a lot of Christian iconography around it and, and meaning and nuance. But I think that that makes it quite unique a story.

• 28:36Kate Lister?

  And there's an interesting tradition that develops, I don't know when it develops, but when you're looking at images of Saint George killing the dragon, the dragon has a vulva in some of the images, which is like an interesting, it's like you didn't need to go that hard.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I wonder why Kate has brought that up. She's gone, oh, Jazz is coming on. I'm just going to Google where the genitalia of dragons are.

• 28:55Kate Lister?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:58Kate Lister?

  We're now into a very niche corner of the internet.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Jokes aside, it's actually pretty well known that dragons in the medieval period could have genitalia often of.

• 29:07Kate Lister?

  See, I'm not completely insane.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  She's not just being a weirdo, like, she's just made it up. She hasn't Googled some weird dragon porn. It's actually real, what she's saying.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you do get the vulva on a number of dragons in the medieval period. And that's because what the dragon symbolizes in the medieval period, obviously in the christianized world, is this idea of, you know, the temptation, the connections to the serpent in Eden. Oh, yeah, of course. It becomes an embodiment of the devil. And as we know, sex is a bad thing, you know, unless it's in a certain like. For making babies. This is making babies. Once a week with the lights off. So it kind of, we get this sort of exploration of the chaos and the monstrosity of kind of that more promiscuous sex, like almost kind of put on top of the dragon myth in this time. Yeah. So that's why you get the vulva.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  And you do get like, yeah, they're not, they're not quiet about it because you can have a dragon's vulva out and then a spear from one of the, one of the figures. It's not subtle, is it? Yeah, so it's not subtle. And then there's this whole interesting thing then about the dragon.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Sometimes if the gender's not clear, right, but the dragon in this sort of like symbolism, being the kind of like chaotic, monstrous, carnal madness of sex. And then, so therefore like the uncivilized in that respect. And then like the civilized man who's like coming in with his, you know, sword. With his shiny sword. Shiny sword or his long stick. Yeah. Giving it a poke.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  But about, it's about, actually that's symmetrical. We have these symmetrical battles again in the ancient world as well. This idea of like, um, the need for man to overpower a beast like a dragon because they're trying to impose order on something that we perceive as uncivilized, chaotic, out of control. So it, it, it's something that, the thing about dragon stuff that's really interesting is you just see this thing play out again and again and again and again across history. So I can go back thousands of years, go, oh yeah, they're using that same kind of like symbolism there. Same trope. A thousand years later, oh, they're using it again, but this time it's Christian rather than pagan or this time it's, you know, this fear about women, this fear about the devil, this fear about, you know, another thing in the ancient world. So it's kind of. Uh what I love about it.

• 31:30Kate Lister?

  Well, let's talk about some non-Christian traditions then. Tell me about some some female dragon slayers who aren't, you know, making signs of the cross inside a dragon's stomach.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Luckily, that's quite unique to her, so that's good. So I have three others in my book. So there are a few other dragon tales, but the you'll love this as a historian, the source material was too vague or too kind of like just a little bit like I was like, I don't really feel comfortable uh looking into that story. There wasn't enough there for me. So I picked these other three figures. So there's Medea from ancient Greece, who I have in the book, and her story is pretty kick ass. But then you have Takoyu, who is a Japanese, um I made her a young samurai, a female samurai, uh onomusha they're called, which actually existed, female samurai. So she has her tale of the dragon. And then you also have uh Thakane, who is a young woman from the Basotho tribe in Lozotho, South Africa.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  So I wanted to get a nice, like, um big global tale, big mixture of these different women from different cultures for us to look at. I mean.

• 32:34Kate Lister?

  Who's Thakane? Let's talk about her.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Thakane is uh amazing. So she is this young woman and she uh lives in this village and her parents have died. So she's taken on the role of elder to her two younger brothers who are chieftains, who are about to kind of, you know, coming of age, take over um their their power, their their kind of, you know, position as chief in the in the village. But they want some special skins to wear and they ask her to go and get this rather than uh any old animal skin. They want the skins of these creatures called the Nanabalele. And the Nanabalele are essentially, they look quite a lot like crocodiles to us, if you look at the imagery. And in Africa, you often get dragons look more like crocodiles or snakes. They don't really look like the kind of things that we recognize in in Europe.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  So the Nanabalele are essentially crocodiles, but they have glowing skin. And they're kind of like a bit more like they're kind of like, like, you know, magical, you know, in that sense. So she has to go on this big quest to go and find the Nanabalele. And there is a witch involved in that who helps her as she does that. And she takes some tribesmen along. With her. So she eventually, I'll cut it all short because you can read the details in the book. But she, she finds an alabanelle, she, she slays, she slays them and takes the skins. And then she has to flee while the rest of them try and get her. Basically, they chase her. So there's a whole little second, there's like part two where she's trying to escape them. And then she gets back to the village and eventually she's victorious with the help of the witch. So there's magical elements to it as well.

• 34:01Kate Lister?

  So that, that one's motivated largely by fashion.

• 34:06Kate Lister?

  That's just, I just really wanted a nice coat.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I don't think I can carry on with this podcast now. Because that's just where we cry.

• 34:13Kate Lister?

  Now I can relate, okay.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  I, I have never once had that thought, Kate, and that's why I love you because you see the world differently, don't you?

• 34:24Kate Lister?

  I ju- I, I, the motivation for a nice coat, that's all I'm saying.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I guess we could get into like the whole, like, should you buy a fur coat thing from this, right? So, but.

• 34:34Kate Lister?

  Don't buy dragon skin.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Don't buy dragon skin.

• 34:36Kate Lister?

  Terribly unethical.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I just can't get past that. It's absolutely fantastic. I really, I just really don't want to talk anymore about it because I just want to leave it there. So the fashion choice.

• 34:45Kate Lister?

  And thank you for listening to Betwixt the Shoes.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm so glad everyone's learned so much about dragons. You know, this is where they come, this is why they come here. Right, no, but the truth is, outside of the fashion choice. This is all about, obviously, a young woman's sense of duty. And the thing that makes her go out is that she's got to do this thing, which kind of sucks. I don't like that motif very much, like this young woman that has to do this thing for her brothers. That's her job.

• 35:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it's not her deciding I'd like a really nice coat, is it? It's she has to go and do this for someone else. Yeah, okay.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, for these windy little brothers who, honestly, I wanted to bitch slap as I was writing them because I just, there's not much about them to be good, to be fair, they're just sort of in the background. So, um, but what actually, what actually is cool about her story is that in doing that, starting off out of a sense of duty, but finding herself and her power as she goes through this journey, like she returns someone different because she's gone through it. So although the reasons for going are like that, there is an evolution of self that comes out of it, which is pretty, pretty awesome.

• 35:43Kate Lister?

  That's the heroic quest, isn't it?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  It is, but it was very much in a sort of sense of like personal empowerment. And a sort of like sense of her becoming her own self, you know, because she's also sort of a teenager, probably in terms of age. So, you know, some of these, a lot of these people in these stories are probably teenagers or young adults.

• 36:04Kate Lister?

  Okay, oh, that's interesting. From a psychological point of view, like, you know, going out there and slaying the dragon as you are on the cusp of adulthood.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  I mean, being a teenager is hard enough. I don't know if you could tell.

• 36:15Kate Lister?

  Without having to kill fucking dragons as well. Although, the ones in this case, they don't sound like they're particularly threatening, and they sound like they just have nice skin. Like, they're not threatening villages, or maybe they are.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  No, I mean, and that's the thing. So this is a folk tale. It's passed down by oral tradition between the tribes in this region. So how I've got my hands on it is there was a woman in the sort of 60s, 50s who went to the Basotho people and recorded their tales in the original language. And she was from that area. That's my source material for it. So I'm sure, and I do know that the name Takane was used in this culture repeatedly. Actually, I have kind of a lot of stock stories, and they use the same sort of characters. So I imagine that this is one tale in Takane's story. There might have been more. So I think

• 37:09Speaker 01

  that, you know, that's the other thing. This is just one little snippet of the story.

• 37:22Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Jasmine after this short break.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  In a world where swords were sharp.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Me, Matt Lewis.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  And me, Dr Eleanor Yanaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:13Kate Lister?

  What about Medea? Is that, was she the really nasty one from Greek mythology?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 38:17Kate Lister?

  Or am I thinking of someone else?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  I would get my hands around your net for that because I think, I think.

• 38:21Kate Lister?

  Sorry.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  No, no, you're fine. No, because I think you're thinking because she's the one that kills her children. So you probably.

• 38:27Kate Lister?

  Yes, yes.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  So that's the thing. I say this like in the book and I've talked about this, you know, publicly as well. We all just think that about Medea because we just go straight to the.

• 38:36Kate Lister?

  Oh, she had a bad rap?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:38Kate Lister?

  Just, she just killed two or three kids and now that's all anyone can talk about.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Which, out of vengeance, which is obviously, that ain't gonna win you awards for things, you know, like, let's be real.

• 38:47Kate Lister?

  So. Mum's net would be so angry with that.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Mum's net would go batshit on that. Actually, I might just put up a post and pretend and see what happens.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  That would be fun.

• 38:58Kate Lister?

  Posting as Medea and just see what.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Just see what happens.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Okay, that's actually, I'm gonna put that down in my little notebook here. No, not really.

• 39:06Kate Lister?

  Police sirens in the background.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  So although I know I'm not gonna sit here as a mother as well myself, I'm not gonna say it's a good idea to kill your children. I mean, even if we want to, sometimes we shouldn't.

• 39:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah, no, bad.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  But that's the thing about Medea. She's amazing as a person and she's got a great story. But we only remember that because it's so horrible. It just sticks in our brains.

• 39:29Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  So rewind her story and like what I'm doing in my book, this is like the origin of Medea, but this is.

• 39:35Kate Lister?

  So it is the same person then?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Same person, but rewind the clock and we're going all the way back to like the first moment that she meets Jason, who is the husband who betrays her and she kills her kids. So we're going all the way back to that first meeting. Part of that first meeting is the dragon. And what I love about Medea's stories, I have a little theory. This is my own theory, which I'm quite proud of. Because I've sent it to a few people and they quite like it. So. Medea meets this dragon and how she is, Jason's looking for the golden fleece. I'm gonna cut it short because there's so much in this story, right? Jason's looking for the golden fleece. He comes to where Medea lives. Medea falls in love with him, either on her own or because the gods have induced it on her. And so she wants to help him.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And he's a bit pathetic. He is a proper pussy. If you ever wanna look at any figure of mythology that's a bit weak, have a little look at Jason.

• 40:23Kate Lister?

  Really?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  He's really annoying. I feel like his modern name, I mean, even, I don't know what we think of Jasons today. I don't know, but.

• 40:31Kate Lister?

  It's, it's, it feels slightly anachronistic, doesn't it? Like a Jason in, in ancient Greece.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. It does. It really does. So he needs her help quite a lot because she's a witch, so she's got magical skills. And so what she does with this dragon is she puts it to sleep essentially, so he can take the fleece that it's guarding. So you can read all the cool bits to, there's more cool bits to that, but that's, that's the top bit, right? But what my theory is, I mentioned, is that when you overpower a dragon, now don't forget, she doesn't actually kill the dragon, but when you overpower it, you, you, you transfer the power away from the dragon and you embody it in yourself. It's almost like she, um, she takes the monstrosity of the dragon and it becomes part of her and it plays out as part of her.

• 41:16Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Because in dragon myth, what tends to happen is unless you kill it and you end it, especially in the West, if you don't kill it and end it, it continues, it continues on, whatever it's doing is playing out. So in some ways, it could be part of the reason why Medea turns the way she does. Think of it, I mean, I'm not gonna use like words like karma because it doesn't relate to this culture, but you could like, think of it like that. You could think of it like this thing has happened and now this thing's.

• 41:45Kate Lister?

  Dragon energy.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, like kinda cause and effect and things like that. So, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting stuff around that for Medea as well.

• 41:53Kate Lister?

  So she doesn't actually kill the dragon. She just makes it go to sleep. Always kill the dragon.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you need to kill it. So when I was writing Slay, I had a long debate with a professor actually, who's a dragon expert. And I said, can we call Medea a slayer if she doesn't kill the dragon? And we both agreed, yes, because it's about when you, when you, when you vanquish the dragon. And if you haven't physically killed it, I mean, that's just note to self, always kill the dragon, put that down.

• 42:18Kate Lister?

  Always kill the dragon. If ever that comes up.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  On your iPhone.

• 42:22Kate Lister?

  Everybody listening, just like mental lock. That is a very useful life hack. You might need that one day.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  I know you all have a note on your iPhone that says important things. So just for a little dot there.

• 42:32Kate Lister?

  Kill dragon. The more I think about it, the more that like the Alien franchise is basically dragon. Like that's like that big reptilian monster that that in in Aliens, it's it is even attacking the maiden in the character of Newt and Ripley has to come and and get it. And it doesn't breathe fire, but it does have acid for for blood and it does burn things and wreak havoc, doesn't it?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that one is really interesting. So first of all, I feel like you've just watched Alien because I feel like it's fresh on your mind.

• 43:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah, it is. Yeah, I have. Yeah, actually.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  We're recording in the afternoon. Is that what you were doing this morning? Because that's a couple of times we've had this reference. It's a good reference, I will give you. You've raised some interesting points with it.

• 43:14Kate Lister?

  I watched it last night for some reason. And and I but I did think at the time, that's quite like a dragon. And now you're saying all this stuff. I'm like, it's very like a dragon.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  So remember that dragons are one monster in a family of monster myths. There are other monsters, right? The dragons make up a, especially in the ancient world, the classical world, they make up a big portion of the monstrous. But there are other other monsters that we could put into into that. A lot of them are like some kind of derivation of dragon, like Medusa is obviously a monster and a woman, and she has the snake-like elements. And then we sort of call those, you could call her a composite dragon, which is when we have like little parts of dragons in them. So if it's, so but they are monsters, monsters, right? So if we just stop calling it a dragon for a minute, call it a monster. Now, why do they exist? Any kind of monster myth anywhere?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Because they are, as we said, are an expression of our deepest fears, often about the unknown. So dragons and other monsters tend to live on the periphery of of society. They live on borderlands. They live in the liminal. We now know that like Egerton is a Tesco. That isn't scary to us, right? We've been to Tesco. It can be scary, but it's probably not.

• 44:28Kate Lister?

  Can be. I was gonna say, it's big for yourself, Jasmine.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Definitely seen some sites in Tesco.

• 44:33Kate Lister?

  I've seen some things, man. I've, I've never been the same since.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  We have, we have geographical knowledge. We've travelled to these places. Others have travelled. We go on Google Maps. So what, what's really interesting is you think about that monsters live on the peripheral and on the boundary of the unknown. Where is our modern boundary of the unknown? It's space.

• 44:50Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Now we're shitting ourselves about aliens.

• 44:52Kate Lister?

  Good point.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Because that, like, we know the world. I know the world. I know that there isn't like, I know that there isn't a dragon that lives up the road in Exeter.

• 45:01Kate Lister?

  In the woods, yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  It's like, I know that because I've been there, seen it with my own eyes. And I've travelled a lot all over the world. I don't really believe that the countries I haven't been into have dragons in there because someone would have told me on social media, right? So now think about this, the knowledge that we have, the information that we have, even, even more in the last hundred years. So myth is expanded, like, like this fear of the monstrous is expanded to include, I think, the new, the new liminal is space. And I think that's why we're getting more, a lot of people are getting more and more interested in aliens. And we've always been interested, but I think we're more and more into, I mean, all this stuff coming out about the UFOs from the US. You know, they're releasing all the like, you know, the files recently, all the censored files, you know, they, it's just stuff.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  I think we're just getting more into that because that's now our monstrous.

• 45:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that makes perfect sense, actually. Like, yeah, that's such a, in, in almost every mythology around the world throughout history, you do get this idea of like, the bad things happen normally in the woods, normally far away. Because to them that was just largely unknown and that you sort of forget how dark the world would have been and how frightening it would be to go outside of your little village or area. Because like literally it's just a wilderness and it's not lit up and you don't know what the fuck is in there.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't know what's in there. And these, these myths are, like I said, they're, they're circulating, they're real to most people. And we, and it's that, it's just that fear of, I mean, I guess it plays out in some ways with our fear of, not my personal fear, but the, the issues that we have around immigrants.

• 46:33Kate Lister?

  Immigrants to dragons.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  No, not the same thing, but I'm saying that is it, there's this fear of, there's this fear, there's this fear of the other coming into my space. And that, that fuels fear. Um, I'm obviously going to call full bullshit on it, but you know, like that is, these things are not unconnected. Like these, the ways our mind operate about things that we are afraid of, which is what we're talking about today. Yeah.

• 46:56Kate Lister?

  It's a very primal fear and very easy to activate. Quite obviously, it's very easy to activate.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like we said, you can change context, you can change context with it. You can move around to different contexts and, and see the same thing playing out in different ways. Which to me just makes this dragon stuff more relevant. Because we can see, yeah, all right, we're not knocking around thinking there's a dragon over there, but we are playing these same fears out in different ways today.

• 47:20Kate Lister?

  So as a final question then, do you have a favourite dragon slayer, man or woman? But I suppose we should say woman because of the, the book, but like a favourite one.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  It won't be a man.

• 47:31Kate Lister?

  Quite frankly, just running around waving their willies about, trying to get famous.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Unless they look like Jason Momoa, then it might be a man, but you know.

• 47:38Kate Lister?

  It's always fine if it's Jason Momoa.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  It would be all right for him. So I think that I would say the story that just really, the, the two stories that really hit home for me were Medea. I really loved writing the story of Medea and I, and also said Margaret. There was something in both those stories, I don't know if it's just me, they just resonated with me in a way that just, the other ones, the other ones felt like older versions of me because they were much more teenage in their kind of like tone. They felt a bit more like, yeah, I can, I can, I kind of really feel like they're my favourites.

• 48:09Kate Lister?

  I love that.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And, and early readers to the book have, have definitely been drawn to those two as well, so.

• 48:14Kate Lister?

  Jasmine, you have been wonderful to talk to, I knew that you would be. And as always, if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  They can find me on the old gram.

• 48:23Kate Lister?

  Yes, you're lots of fun on Instagram actually.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm on there, I'm on there saying things. You sometimes get perimenopausal rants out of me as well.

• 48:30Kate Lister?

  Sometimes you do, that's true.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  We love to go off topic, don't we Kate?

• 48:35Kate Lister?

  Yes, we did, we did.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  That's our brand, slightly off top, experts in things but also random shit too.

• 48:41Kate Lister?

  Of just random nonsense with some history thrown in. Give us the full title of the book again.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  The full title of the book is Slay: Ancient Legends of Female Slayers and the Hidden Mythology of Dragons. You can buy it in the shops, you know, wherever you like to get stuff. All those links are in my bio, easiest place to do it is just hit me up on Instagram. It's jas underscore Elmer, you can find me there and then you can just get what you need. And if you've loved all this and you love dragons and you love female empowerment and you love finding out more about the history of our symbolism, then this book is definitely for you.

• 49:13Kate Lister?

  Fabulous. Thank you so much. You have been spectacular.

• 49:20Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening. Thank you so much to Jasmine for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on Helen of Troy ahead of the big Odyssey film release and an episode on sex work in Soviet Russia all coming your way. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.