The podcast documenting patriarchy through the ages

Have you ever wondered, in this #MeToo era, where it all began? I'm not talking about Brett Kavanaugh's ascension to the US Supreme Court, or Harvey Weinstein or Trumpian pussy-grabbing. Or Malleus Maleficarum, the wildly popular 15th-century guide to torturing witches. Or even sin-laden Eve. No, I mean further back, like, to Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

Humans have lived on Earth for about 300,000 years but it's been only (only!) the past 10,000 or so years that men have hogged the power. Why and how did patriarchy come about?

This is one of the questions tackled by American radio reporter John Biewen in his documentary series called Men, part of his Scene on Radio podcast (on Spotify and iTunes) from the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University, North Carolina. In these PC times it would be tone-deaf for Biewen – a middle-class white man ("the oppressor, in other words", he quips) – to mansplain the patriarchy, so he brings in long-time public radio journalist (and woman of colour) Celeste Headlee to co-host. There's an unnecessarily long childhood story from Biewen at the top of episode one, but otherwise Biewen and Headlee do a deft job with complex concepts such as the cost of toxic masculinity to women and men and the role of gender.

The second half of episode one is a fascinating dive into the patriarchy's formative years, with interviews from leading anthropologists (Netflix's four-part documentary Ascent of Woman also explains the emergence of laws that kept women out of the public sphere). Episode two of Men, on gender and nature versus nurture, is also good, as is episode three on how the patriarchy survived the Enlightenment – a time when things could have, just might have, made a turn for the better.

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