The Women Books & More’s Podcast

TO DIE FOR—A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes

Recipes written on tombstones. Who knew this was even a thing?

Most headstones list names and dates, in rare cases they include something much more personal: beloved family recipes permanently etched in stone.

Rosie Grant traveled the world to research and write a cookbook full of culinary epitaphs from across the globe—spritz cookies from Brooklyn, chicken casserole from Wisconsin, tea biscuits from Nova Scotia, fudge from Salt Lake City, meatloaf from Texas….

The list goes on—40 recipes--from soup (from Buffalo, New York) to nut rolls (from Israel).

On this journey, Rosie discovered that food is a love language and that memories of meals shared as a family are passed down through generations.

Just in time for the holiday season, TO DIE FOR invites us to gather round the table, celebrate the legacies that live on in family recipes and to ask ourselves the question at the heart of it all: If you could be remembered through just one dish, what would it be?

Check out Rosie’s popular @Ghostly.Archives on Instagram

Everett Potter talks about 100 Train Journeys of a Lifetime + Paris tips

I love trains and travel by train at every opportunity. The Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver, the Eurostar from London to Paris, the mighty Indian Pacific from Adelaide to Perth. So…I was thrilled to hear that Everett Potter had just written a big and comprehensive book about trains, 100 Train Journeys of a Lifetime: The World’s Ultimate Rides.

Let me tell you a little about Everett Potter. He writes for numerous A-list publications like The Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast Traveler, Forbes, National Geographic, and he hosts Everett Potter’s Travel Report, a highly acclaimed digital site. He is also the expert host on select National Geographic Expeditions Train Journeys.

I was pleased to hear Everett say that train travel (especially overnight trains) is becoming hugely popular, especially in Europe. Perhaps it’s the convenience of traveling from city center to city center. Perhaps it is the romance of historic journeys inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Yes, there still is an Orient Express—two of them, in fact. Very luxe.

To buy the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/789609/100-train-journeys-of-a-lifetime-by-everett-potter/

To read Everett Potter’s Travel Report: everettpotter.com

For info on National Geographic Expeditions Train Journeys:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/expeditions/destinations/europe/train/swiss-italy-train/

A conversation with best-selling author Caroline Alexander

Caroline Alexander is the author of internationally best-selling Skies of Thunder, The Endurance, The Bounty, and other works of literary non-fiction. In 2015, she published an acclaimed translation of Homer's Iliad, the first English translation (form the original Greek) of a Homeric poem by a woman.

Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World is a tale about the pilots who flew fickle, untested aircraft through monsoons and enemy fire, with inaccurate maps and only primitive navigation technology. There were deadly crashes (more than 600) and astonishing feats of courage and survival.

The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition is a truly riveting account of Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition…one of the last of the great adventures of what is now called the Heroic Age of Explorations. The plan was to cross the Antarctic on foot. Only 80 miles from Endurance’s destination, the ship was caught in thick pack ice that splintered and sank it.

Caroline’s book includes never-before published images by Frank Hurley. You can see some of them here: https://www.historyhit.com/photos-of-shackletons-endurance/

For more about Caroline Alexander: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/310/caroline-alexander/

Still Alice by Lisa Genova from the archives

Since the moment I chatted with Lisa Genova about her new book, More or Less Maddy, I’ve been getting messages from you all, asking me to air the interview we did a few years ago when Lisa wrote Still Alice. Here it is—by popular demand.

For those who don’t know Still Alice, here’s the story: Dr. Alice Howland is a renowned linguistics professor at Columbia University. When words begin to escape her and she starts becoming lost on her daily jogs, Alice must come face-to-face with a devastating diagnosis: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. The once-vibrant woman struggles to hang on to her sense of self for as long as possible and her three grown children watch helplessly as their mother disappears more and more with each passing day.

Julianne Moore played the part of Alice Howland in the 2014 film Still Alice and won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. You can stream it on Amazon and Apple TV.

For more about Lisa Genova lisagenova.com 

For another podcast about early-onset Alzheimer’s, scroll down to find Barry Petersen’s conversation about Jan’s Story.

Is Everything We Know about Sacagawea Wrong?

Here’s what we think we know about arguably the most famous Native American women who ever lived: she was interpreter and guide for Lewis & Clark; she traveled 1000s of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean and she died tragically young.

 

But…what if everything we know about Sacagawea is wrong…including how we pronounce her name…

 

Sandra and Dennis Fox sit down to talk with us. They are married scholars, now retired from the educations division at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

 

Dennis is a directly descended from Sacagawea.

 

 Our Story of Eagle Woman: Sacagawea: They Got It Wrong, aims to set the record straight through oral histories, family testimony and even DNA evidence. And uipends everything we think we know about Sacagawea.

 

For more:

Books by Sandra and Dennis Fox:  https://www.specialbooks.com/namericans.htm

The New York Times article about Sacagawea: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/magazine/sacagawea-biography-history.html

Tailor made Travel with Black Tomato’s Carolyn Addison

Today, we sit down with Black Tomato’s Carolyn Addison to talk about travel.

Black Tomato is one of the world’s leading luxury travel companies. Carolyn is one of the standout female leaders at Black Tomato and is the driving force behind some of Black Tomato’s most imaginative and compelling travel experiences. She’s been called an “experience architect.”

She tells us about solo travel, mother-daughter travel, generational travel, and how to travel like James Bond or follow in the footsteps of Coco Chanel or Winston Churchill.

We also discuss staying safe while traveling in what is now a much-changed world.

blacktomato.com

Becoming a Badass…From Fearful to Fierce

Margie Goldsmith is one of the most accomplished women I know.

She has traveled to more than 150 countries on seven continents and written more than 1,000 award-winning articles about her adventures. You can read them in Forbes, National Geographic, the New York Times and many other publications. She is a film maker, a former marathoner and triathlete. She plays blues harmonica and jams with some of the most celebrated jam bands in New York City. She’s recorded two blues albums. You can listen here: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/margie-goldsmith/1603713611

She lives her life on her own terms. But it was not always that way.

Her memoir: Becoming a Badass...From Fearful to Fierce chronicles her journey of resilience and adventure. She speaks to anyone looking to overcome a sense of powerlessness and to anyone who has ever felt “less than.

margiegoldsmith.com

 

A Conversation about Casting for Recovery

Casting for Recovery (a national nonprofit) delivers healing for women diagnosed with breast cancer that traditional medicine alone can’t offer — powerful, oncology-informed weekend retreats held on a river, not in a hospital room. CfR celebrates its 30^th anniversary and currently hosts 60 free fly-fishing retreats in all 50 states, serving over 800 women each year. Women at any age and any stage off breast cancer treatment or recovery, are eligible to apply.

Susan Gaetz, CfR’s Executive Director, tells us about the organization, how it started and what to expect from a weekend retreat.  castingforrecovery.org

Sisters on the Fly is a proud supporter of CfR. sistersonthefly.com

An article about CfR is featured in the September/October issue of The Saturday Evening Post and is available online after October 8, 2025.  thesaturdayeveningpost.com