Wild Olive
Arts & Culture Podcasts
The Wild Olive Podcast brings you game-changing conversations about literature, culture, and the Bible. With co-hosts Jeanne Petrolle and Jennifer Bird, Wild Olive serves up idea-feasts: tasty insights about biblical texts and contemporary (or...
Location:
United States
Description:
The Wild Olive Podcast brings you game-changing conversations about literature, culture, and the Bible. With co-hosts Jeanne Petrolle and Jennifer Bird, Wild Olive serves up idea-feasts: tasty insights about biblical texts and contemporary (or classic!) literature, with generous side-portions of cultural commentary and hearty laughter. One literature professor + one biblical studies professor = uncontrolled, out-of-bounds, untamed conversation: ideal listening for the post-evangelical, the spiritual-but-not-religious, the Bible-curious secularist, the free-thinking religionist, and the literary-but-not-stodgy! New episodes every other Friday!
Language:
English
Episodes
#66: American Lazarus with Joanna Brooks
2/13/2026
Wild Olive is back! Join Jeanne as she talks with literature scholar and Mormon influencer Joanna Brooks about the Lazarus tradition in early American literature.
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Duration:01:10:16
#65: The War Within Us with Prof. Liam Corely
11/14/2025
Jeanne talks with Liam Corely, a Professor, Scholar, Poet and Solider. Together they discuss his article "The "Jouissance" of Belief: Devotional Reading and the (Re)Turn to Religion" as well as how war and prose go hand in hand. Prof. Corely's article can be found here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44314029
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Duration:00:52:54
#64: Mysteries of the Bible with Peggy Sturba
10/3/2025
Jeanne talks with Peggy Sturba, Visiting Asst. Professor of Honors at Coastal Carolina University and author of "‘That Which Remains: Memory, Identity, and Gothic Modernism in McCormack’s Solar Bones".
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Duration:00:47:56
#63: The Bible As A Survival Tool with Courtney Hitson
9/12/2025
Jeanne talks with Courtney Hitson! Together they discuss their spiritual origins, atheism and the work of Flannery O'Connor.
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Duration:00:46:37
#62 Liberating The Bible with Jody Ondich
8/1/2025
Joining Jeanne this week is Jody Ondich, Professor of Philosophy at Lake Superior College! Together, they discuss the benefits of open text resources, humor in the bible and the choice of abstaining from religion.
Read Jody Ondich's Book "Reading the Bible as Literature: a Journey" Here!: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/bible/
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Duration:00:36:11
#61: Reverend Doctor Yolanda Pierce
7/4/2025
Jeanne talks with Reverend Doctor Yolanda Pierce about the Chicago Black Renaissance, Poet Margaret Walker and Dr. Pierce's new book 'The Wounds Are the Witness'
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Duration:01:09:36
#60: Christ & The Power of Coercion with Dr. Miranda Zapor Cruz
6/6/2025
Jeanne sits down with Professor Miranda Zapor Cruz. Join them as she explains the power of coercion, the modern combination of church and politics & why Christian Nationalism and the teachings of Christ do not go together.
Professor Miranda Zapor Cruz's Book "Faithful Politics" available at these links: https://mirandazaporcruz.com/faithful-politics/
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Duration:00:53:48
S4 Episode 3: Dreams-- with Jennifer!
4/25/2025
Jennifer is back! --And joining in on this season's conversation of dreams in the bible! Joining us is citizen scholar, Luke Moss.
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Duration:00:49:11
S4 Episode 2: The Dreamings of Abimelech
4/4/2025
Torrance Church - Dreamscapes of Divine Revelation: Unveiling the 21 Dreams In The Bible
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Duration:00:32:07
S4 Episode 1: Dreams with Gen Z
3/14/2025
This week, Jeanne is joined by her Wild Olive colleagues (Matt, Klara & Luke) to discuss Levertov's poem "The Jacob's Ladder" and kick off this season's theme of "Dreams". Together they analyze dreams as they appear in the Hebrew Bible, specifically Genesis and Jacob's Dream at Bethel.
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Duration:00:35:50
S3 Episode 19: The Sauciness of "Song of Songs"
2/28/2025
This week, Jennifer and Jeanne entertain ideas found in chapter nine of Jennifer's book "Marriage and The Bible" through analyzation of "Song of Songs" as love poetry, and a saucy one at that!
DISCLAIMER: Technical difficulties on Jeanne's mic, apologies for sound quality!
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Duration:00:41:15
S3 Episode 18: Four Scandalous Women (Not Including Us)
2/14/2025
Jeanne and Jennifer return! With them, they bring a new discussion on the four women who appear in the genealogy for Jesus; Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Together, their stories give an insight into the biblical portrayal of femininity, motherhood and marriage.
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Duration:00:37:57
Annunciation & Virginity
1/17/2025
Continuing our hiatus, we present an episode from season one as Jennifer and Jeanne dive deep into "The Annunciation" by Edward Muir. Pairing it with Luke Chapter 1, they discuss conception, purity, motherhood and how other interpretations can affect our understanding of the story.
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Duration:00:37:15
Mrs. Lazarus & The Idea of Resurrection
1/3/2025
While Jeanne and Jennifer take a short hiatus for the next batch of episodes, hear an episode from our back catalog that relates to this seasons theme of "Marriage and the Bible"! This episode explore "Mrs. Lazarus," a poem by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy. The poem remixes the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. As they engage the Gospel story alongside Duffy's poem, your hosts discuss the meaning of resurrection as a life-death-life pattern that appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Newer Testament and, metaphorically speaking, in life outside literature.
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Duration:00:42:00
S3 Episode 17: Christmas Stories: One Birth, Two Accounts
12/20/2024
In the spirit of the holiday season, Jennifer and Jeanne discuss two different accounts of Jesus' birth. One from Luke, the other from Matthew in the New Testament. Together they analyze how these two separate tales have been blended together over time to create the story we think we know today.
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Duration:00:39:03
S3 Episode 16: Why You Shouldn't Get Married (According to Paul)
12/6/2024
This week, Jeanne and Jennifer discuss the biblical concept of staying unmarried, celibate or widowed as outlined by Paul in 1 Corinthians.
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Duration:00:35:51
S3 Episode 15: A Tale of Two Bathshebas
11/23/2024
It's an analyzation of two fascinating literary characters! Jennifer and Jeanne dissect the parallels between the Bathsheba, as found in The Book of Samuel, and her inspiration by the same name in Thomas Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd" (1874).
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Duration:00:37:49
S3 Episode 14: The Power of The Name
11/8/2024
This week, Jeanne and Jennifer discuss the concept of labels, language and the power to use them, through the lens of Ursula K. Le Guin's short story "She Unnames Them".
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Duration:00:32:35
S3 Episode 13: How The Suffragettes Took The Bible Back
10/25/2024
Jennifer is back! And this week, she and Jeanne discuss the significance and impact of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "The Woman's Bible" (1895).
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Duration:00:51:05
S3 Episode 12: Bechdel, Brides & The Bible
10/11/2024
Feminism and the Bible don't typically go hand-in-hand, but could they? This week, Jeanne discusses Christian feminism through depictions of women in the Bible and classic literature, as well as modern interpretations from notable feminist authors Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Alison Bechdel.
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Duration:00:17:24