In June 1692, a Salem jury found 71-year-old Rebecca Nurse not guilty of witchcraft. The court refused to accept it, and three weeks later she was hanged.

In the second of three Salem episodes, host Xtina Rose follows the respected church grandmother who proved that no one in Salem Village was safe. We cover the girl who saw a ghost she couldn’t name, the examination where Rebecca was judged for her dry eyes, the 39 neighbors who risked their names to defend her, and the question she didn’t answer because she couldn’t hear it. Then we follow her family’s twenty-year fight to clear her, from her accuser’s public apology to a granite monument, and ask why turning her into a saint might hide the real lesson of Salem.

Content Note: This episode discusses imprisonment, execution, the deaths of children, and a forced body search of an elderly woman. Please take care of yourself while you listen.

Read the records yourself: Rebecca Nurse’s 1692 examination, the neighbors’ petition, and her own appeal are free online at the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive: https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n94.html

Join the conversation on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com

Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com

For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com

Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.

Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

Labeled: This Week — A weekly roundup of women who got labeled in the news, because my database can’t keep up.

THIS WEEK:

Inconsistent. Monster. Doesn’t belong. Liar. This week, those labels were applied to a sexual assault survivor, a mother on trial, two Senate candidates, and a group of women in Hollywood.

In the first Labeled: This Week, host Xtina Rose catches up on two ongoing cases: the Cornell lawsuit that put a prosecutor’s decisions under scrutiny, and the Lindsay Clancy mistrial. Then she looks at the week’s new labels, from the president’s slur against Senate candidate Dr. Annie Andrews to JD Vance telling Angie Nixon she doesn’t belong in America, to a New York Times investigation into women who say professionals were paid to destroy their reputations. In every story, one question: who benefits from these women being labeled?

See a woman labeled this week? Send it my way in a DM on Instagram @the.wbs.pod or email thewbspod@gmail.com. It might end up in the database, and maybe on the show. If you liked this episode, follow, share, and leave a rating or review.

Join the conversation on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com

Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com

For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com

Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.

Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

CAUTION: This episode discusses slavery, racism, and a confession that was beaten out of a woman, as well as imprisonment and execution. Please take care of yourself while you listen.

"I have done nothing." That's the first thing the 1692 court record says Tituba told the magistrates. By the end of the day, she'd confessed to meeting the Devil, and the Salem witch trials had begun.

In the first of three Salem episodes, host Xtina Rose separates what the records actually say about Tituba from three centuries of invention. We cover the enslaved "Indian woman" in the minister's house, the loaded questions that made her confess, the girls who went quiet when she said what the room wanted, and the thirteen months in jail that ended with her being sold for her fees. Then we follow how later writers turned her into a Black Caribbean "voodoo" witch leading girls in the woods, from a Victorian illustration to The Crucible, and how that myth lets them off the hook.

Read the records yourself: Tituba's actual 1692 examinations are free online at the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive: https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n125.html

• Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com
• Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com
• For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com
• Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.
• Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

Content note: this episode discusses drug and alcohol dependency and stalking-adjacent fan behavior.

It's SPOOKY Season! ...Aaaaand I'm sick, so pardon my nasal voice. This is the first of our Spooky Season Witch episodes, and I am starting with an ICON. Although most of my episodes focus on women who were damaged by their labels, occasionally I'll occasionally feature a woman who triumphed over her label. I'm going to call those Icon episodes, and our first one is Stevie Nicks.

--

"I am not a witch. Get a life." That's what Nicks told fans in 1998 — more than two decades into a career, people still couldn't stop asking about her supposed spellcasting.

In this episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose traces how "Rhiannon," a 1976 television performance, and a decade of New Age fascination and Satanic Panic backlash turned a working songwriter into a supposed sorceress. We cover the double standard that let David Bowie play an alien without comment while Nicks got treated as a confession, what the label actually cost her — a year spent afraid of her own wardrobe, credibility as a songwriter, and years of a hidden addiction the mystique helped obscure — and how she eventually took the label back on her own terms, from American Horror Story to two solo Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions.

Have something to share? Send me a message.

• Join the Hexy Coven on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com
• Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com
• For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com
• Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.
• Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

"I have never apologized for the roles I play." Hattie McDaniel wrote that in 1947, seven years after becoming the first Black person to win an Academy Award, for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind.

In this episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose looks at how that role came to cover up the woman who played it. Before Hollywood, Hattie was a singer, songwriter, radio star, and comedian. After the Oscar, studio publicity told audiences she was Mammy in real life, critics like the NAACP's Walter White attacked her choices, and Hollywood kept offering her the same maid roles. We cover her famous "$700" answer, the segregated table at her own Oscar ceremony, the court case she fought to keep her home, and the mystery of her missing Oscar plaque.

Content Note: This episode discusses slavery, racism, segregation, and racist stereotypes in film, including blackface, with brief mentions of lynching and sexual violence. You'll also hear historical quotes that use outdated racial language. Please take care of yourself while you listen.

Listen

• My favorite Hattie McDaniel song: "Any Kind of Man Would Be Better Than You" — https://youtu.be/q8vIbm8DbdI
• Bob Corley as Beulah, "The Slogan Contest" — https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/comedy/beulah/the-slogan-contest-1947-05-07

Watch

• Hattie McDaniel winning Best Supporting Actress, 12th Academy Awards (1940) — https://youtu.be/e7t4pTNZshA?si=yXToM4SzLn1nHFnV
• The Mad Miss Manton (1938), "I didn't ask her up" scene (starts at 1:29) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcHzfx9uCjs&t=89s

Join the conversation on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com

Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com

For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com

Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.

Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

"When I die, my epitaph should be: I died a thousand deaths." Anna May Wong was Hollywood's first Chinese American star, and the industry kept killing her off.

In this episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose follows a third-generation Angeleno from sneaking onto film sets as a kid to becoming the actress whose early roles shaped the "Dragon Lady" and "Lotus Blossom" stereotypes. We cover why she left Hollywood for Europe; why she was paid less than the white co-star who played her father in yellowface; and how she lost the lead in The Good Earth and turned down the villain role they offered instead. We also cover why China rejected her as "too American," and the one role in Flower Drum Song that went to yellowface. It was hers.

Content Note: This episode discusses racism, including the racist bullying of children, anti-Chinese immigration laws, and a description of foot-binding. Please take care of yourself while you listen.

Join the conversation on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com

Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com

For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com

Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.

Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

"I've often been asked, does it bother you when someone refers to you as a dumb blonde? It never has. You see, I've always known I wasn't." Marilyn Monroe said that in 1954, and the world still didn't believe her.

In this episode of Witches, Bitches, and Sluts, host Xtina Rose traces how 20th Century Fox built the "dumb blonde," from the femme fatale role in Niagara that worked too well to the breathy voice built from a stutter. Then she shows how Monroe played along on purpose, until she refused, founded her own production company, and won one of the biggest contract fights of the era. We cover what the label cost her: zero Oscar nominations, a biographer who called her "a lover of books who did not read" without ever meeting her, and a psychiatric stay she walked into voluntarily and couldn't walk out of. We also cover why it stuck, and how she's still being exploited 70 years later.

Content Note: This episode discusses child sexual abuse, domestic violence, mental illness and involuntary psychiatric confinement, drug use, and suicide. Please take care of yourself while you listen.

Look these up (every image or clip the episode tells you to find):

• Her Blue Book Agency photos as a brunette
• Love Happy publicity-tour photos (1949)
• Philippe Halsman's "jumpology" Life cover (1959)
• Eve Arnold's photo of Monroe reading Ulysses
• Monroe on The Jack Benny Show (1953), and Jayne Mansfield's version of the same sketch
• Her personal library: https://themarilynmonroecollection.com/

Join the conversation on Instagram @the.wbs.pod, or share your story with me at thewbspod@gmail.com

Find the sources for every episode on the website: wbspodcast.com

For collabs, sponsorships, and business inquiries: info@wbspodcast.com

Love the show? Help keep it going by buying me a coffee.

Written, produced, hosted, and edited by Xtina Rose. Music by Stephen Mexler and Xtina Rose.

The fastest way to misunderstand a Black woman is to reach for a familiar label. We start with the one Michelle Obama names so plainly: how easily Black women get tagged as “angry,” then we pull the thread back through history and forward into research that shows what those snap judgments can do.

I walk through three stereotypes that work together like a trap: Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire. Mammy isn’t just a costume from old films it’s a story that made slavery and domestic labor look like devotion, then got replayed through minstrelsy, advertising like Aunt Jemima, and Hollywood roles that rewarded self-sacrifice. From there, we connect Mammy to the modern “Strong Black Woman” expectation and the mental health toll of being praised for endurance while being denied care.

Then we shift to Jezebel and Sapphire, two labels that police desire and punish resistance. We talk about how sexual violence gets excused through stereotype, how media representation trains audiences to see Black women’s bodies as public property, and what studies reveal about implicit bias that shows up in seconds. Finally, we bring Sapphire into the workplace, where words like “aggressive” or “difficult” can hide unequal standards, and we name the constant “shifting” Black women may do just to avoid being misread.

If this resonates, listen to the full episode, share it with someone who needs the language for what they’ve seen, and leave a rating or review so the show can reach more people.

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