This week we’re so excited to share a conversation that’s been a long time coming—between Risa Dickens of Missing Witches and Liv Albert, the brilliant, hilarious host of Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!
It was one of those days when both witches were overwhelmed. Risa was juggling remission, a clinical trial, motherhood, and magic. Liv was trying to find the off-switch for her own racing mind. But when they sat down together—two Canadians, vaguely from Montréal, both obsessed with mythology, feminism, and witchcraft—they immediately remembered why these conversations matter.
“We’re gonna share this on both our podcast streams,” Risa says. “We’re in the bend of the Venn diagram right now.”
In this episode, the witches talk about how mythology itself has been shaped by patriarchy. Liv breaks down how nearly everything we think we know about Greek myths comes through the filter of men deciding what was “worth” writing down and preserving.
“History isn’t this solid-state thing,” Liv says. “It’s completely subjective. The plays and stories that survive did so because generations of men decided they were valuable—and so we mostly have the stories that serve their worldviews.”
Together, they trace a lineage of missing stories: the lost plays where women were strong and strange and clever; the witch-goddesses Circe and Medea, so often twisted into monsters; and the nymphs—those daughters of rivers and trees—whose ancient names once also meant young brides.
“It’s so gross,” Liv laughs. “Nymphomaniac literally comes from that same root—these women who were made to be ‘defiled.’ It tells you everything about how patriarchy rewrites desire.”
Risa and Liv find solidarity in these rewrites, too. In the work of re-storying what empire erased. In the messy joy of saying: we’re allowed to reinvent ourselves, even from minute to minute, as Alan Watts once said—“you’re under no obligation to be the person you were five minutes ago.”
By the end of their mythic meander, the witches have built something together: a tiny transformer-style collective of care, laughter, and rebellion.
“We have to be like Power Rangers,” Risa says. “Put aside the ways they divide us and form into teams that can hold power together.”
Tune in to Missing Witches or Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! for the full episode—an ecstatic dive into Greek witches, feminist retellings, pharmakon, sacred groves, and the queer, ancient roots of resistance.
