In a world where Greek women could not vote, own land, or escape lifelong guardianship, kings and generals for over a thousand years refused to launch campaigns or found cities without the approval of one woman: the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. This episode reconstructs the office as a lineage of real women stretching from around 1400 BC to the late fourth century AD, rather than a single mythic figure.

We cover the site's origins in the myth of Apollo and the serpent Python, the goat herder Coretas and the fissure that sent his animals into a frenzy, the shift to priestesses aged 50 and over after an abduction, and the surprisingly class-blind selection of candidates. Then we walk through a consultation day, the gibberish theory contradicted by Herodotus, Plutarch's account of the physical toll, and the modern geological discovery of ethy ...