John Lennon admitted it himself: he wouldn't give Yoko Ono a co-writing credit on "Imagine" because she was a woman. That's just one of the stories our first guest ever, Jenna Cosgrove, creator of the viral TikTok series Lost Women, dug up while ripping women out of the footnotes and back into history.

Jenna Cosgrove, the Australian screenwriter and TikTok creator behind Lost Women, joins Ksenija and Sue to talk about the women erased from history, from WWII combat nurses who stormed the beaches at D-Day unarmed and were denied veteran status when they came home, to the real story behind who wrote "Imagine." They also get into whether things have actually gotten better, and the new AI-plagiarism witch hunt disproportionately targeting women authors.

📚 Books Mentioned
• And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
• The Women by Kristin Hannah

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija's Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙 ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines. New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

This is Part 1 of a three-part conversation with Jenna Cosgrove. Part 2 digs into literary erasure, centered on Sanora Babb and Steinbeck. Part 3 covers the manosphere, from Jenna's own experience making feminist-coded content publicly.

👉 CHAPTERS
00:00 Introducing Jenna Cosgrove & the Lost Women Project
01:46 Erasing Female War Veterans
08:18 The Case of Yoko Ono and Britney Spears
11:58 AI Witch Hunt

Did #MeToo go too far—or is that the wrong question?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija Popovic and Sue discuss Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, a provocative campus novel that asks what happens when allegations of sexual misconduct reshape not only one man’s career, but also the life and reputation of his wife.

The narrator’s husband, a university professor, is accused by former students of inappropriate relationships. She does not publicly condemn him, and students begin to question whether she should still be allowed to teach.

Should a professor lose her job because she remains married to a man accused of misconduct? Are students entitled to feel uncomfortable—or does this become guilt by association?

We talk about the achievements of the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment, power imbalances between professors and students, changing cultural standards, generational differences, safe spaces, public accountability, and the difficulty of judging past behaviour by today’s moral framework.

This is not an argument against #MeToo. It is a conversation about nuance: where accountability belongs, how cultural change happens, and whether movements lose public support when every difficult question is treated as moral failure.

Where do you draw the line between accountability and guilt by association? Tell us in the comments.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: https://amzn.to/4goD9f6

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 KSENIJA ON GOODREADS:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Did Me Too Go Too Far?
04:16 The Issue with Wokeness
05:40 The Trap of Judging the Past from Today's Perspective
10:57 Challenging the Mainstream Narrative

Do open marriages actually work, or do they sometimes become a story one partner tells themselves in order to stay?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija and Sue use Vladimir by Julia May Jonas to debate open marriage, monogamy, infidelity, and the uneasy line between genuine freedom and unequal compromise.

The marriage at the center of Vladimir is technically open: both partners have had affairs. But when the husband’s relationships with students become public, the question becomes more complicated. Did both people freely choose the arrangement, or did one partner set the rules while the other learned to live with them?

We discuss why people marry in the first place, whether monogamy is natural or cultural, the practical and emotional reasons couples remain together, power imbalances in relationships, children and extended family, and the very different ways marriage functions in Montenegro and the United States.

Would you ever choose an open marriage? And can it work only when both partners truly want it? Tell us in the comments.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: https://amzn.to/4goD9f6

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 KSENIJA ON GOODREADS:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS
00:00 Open Marriages
06:09 Cultural Perspectives on Marriage
10:17 The Practicalities of Marriage

#LiteraryFiction #ContemporaryFiction #BookTube #LiteraryPodcast #TransatlanticBookmarks

Can women be sexy after 50, or are we still uncomfortable with older women who openly desire?
In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija Popovic and Sue discuss Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: a darkly funny campus novel about a 58-year-old professor whose husband is under investigation for relationships with students, and whose own obsession with a younger novelist disrupts every rule she thought she understood.
But this is not a book review! We talk about female desire after 50, menopause, confidence, aging, beauty standards, sexuality, age-gap relationships, and the persistent double standard between older men and older women. Why is an older man with a younger woman still so culturally familiar, while an older woman with a younger man can seem provocative—or even unacceptable?
We also discuss Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in the Netflix adaptation, the pressure women feel around aging, and whether culture is finally making room for older women to be complicated, sexual, ambitious, and fully visible.
What do you think? Can women be sexy after 50—and why are we still asking? Tell us in the comments.

#WomenOver50 #Vladimir #TransatlanticBookmarks

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: https://amzn.to/4goD9f6
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 KSENIJA ON GOODREADS:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 The Complexities of Aging and Desire
07:29 Confidence in an Aging Woman
09:51 Older Woman, Younger Man
15:44 Do Young Men Have It Worse?

Do adult children owe their parents daily contact, hands-on care, and the chance to stay in the homes they love, or is that expectation unfair to the lives their children are trying to build?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija Popovic and Sue Graham Johnston use Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread to debate one of the most emotionally difficult questions in family life: what do we owe the people who loved us first?

Ksenija cannot understand a family that would move an elderly father out of the home he has lived in for decades, or a grown child who calls their mother only once a week. Sue argues that love does not necessarily mean living together, calling every day, or putting an adult child’s career and family life on hold. Between them: the Balkan and Mediterranean idea of intergenerational obligation, the American ideal of independence, aging parents, dementia, inherited homes, guilt, care, and the things families leave behind.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler: https://amzn.to/4zzJImG
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: https://amzn.to/4xRP8Yb
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: https://amzn.to/4gkO2NB
• American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee: https://amzn.to/4cSZOhc
• I'll Take the Fire by Leïla Slimani: https://amzn.to/4zve3CI
• Life of M by Rachel Cusk: https://amzn.to/3U5WAR7
• Partita by Barbara Kingsolver: https://amzn.to/4c1rVdX
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: https://amzn.to/4gdH8JS
• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver: https://amzn.to/4hLh6QU
• Whistler by Ann Patchett: https://amzn.to/4gm21ma
• Heather by Caitlin Mullen: https://amzn.to/4wAdEfH
• Fathers Before Sons by Ksenija Popovic: https://amzn.to/4wDloNK

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Teaser
01:05 Intergenerational Relations
07:19 Cultural Expectations and Responsibilities Towards Elders
26:00 The Ugly Side of Strong Intergenerational Connection
30:14 Balancing Independence and Family Obligations
33:53 Is the Relationship with our Elders Transactional?
38:27 The Future of Multi-Generational Living
41:42 What Do We Owe the People Who Loved Us First?
57:56 What We're Reading

A sports medicine journal has a term, "beautiful suffering," for what elite athletes experience during 24-plus-hour endurance events. This week Sue takes the lead with a question she's been sitting with since watching runners collapse in freezing rain at the 2018 Boston Marathon: are elite athletes wired differently, or is toughness something the rest of us can actually learn? The conversation moves through Corey Richards' memoir of surviving an avalanche and an undiagnosed mental illness, Steve Magness's case against the old "grit and bear it" model of toughness, Ksenija's years coaching football players and elite athletes through NLP and pattern interrupts, and why the answer to "is this person a psychopath" might just be "no, they've found a very efficient way to feel alive.”

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:

(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• The Color of Everything by Corey Richards: https://amzn.to/4zlpZqA
• Do Hard Things by Steve Magness: https://amzn.to/3SExh8h
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed: https://amzn.to/461OdbM
• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://amzn.to/4xCnw9p
• Mindset by Carol Dweck: https://amzn.to/4g3SEYc
• The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu: https://amzn.to/460DXR9
• A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler: https://amzn.to/4x45nla

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes: https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 EXPLORE OUR HOSTS' WORK & READING LISTS
• Read Ksenija's Novels: https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications
• Ksenija on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
A brand new weekly literary podcast hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston. From opposite sides of the Atlantic, we bring you thoughtful, relaxed, and witty conversations about contemporary fiction, classic literature, award shortlists, and the human questions hiding inside the books we read.

New episodes are released every week.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction
00:57 The Mindset of Elite Athletes
12:13 Debunking the Toughness Myth
16:11 Can the Mindset of Elite Athletes Be Taught?
19:45 Association and Dissociation
26:57 Pattern Interrupt
32:43 Achieving Flow
39:59 The Advantage of Personalized Approach
45:51 The Astonishing Power of the Mind
51:21 The Psychology of Basic Human Needs
01:02:49 When The Mindset Isn't There
01:08:16 The Dedication Conundrum
01:09:31 Recommendations

Hybristophilia is the clinical term for falling for dangerous men, and it's why serial killers on death row get marriage proposals by the hundreds. Romance publishing figured out how to sell that same instinct as fiction nearly a century ago.

Ksenija and Sue (and a new guest co-host) trace the "dark romance" trope from Wuthering Heights through Twilight to BookTok, testing the three big arguments in defense of the genre, the double-edged misogyny debate, and why the fantasy of the man who's dangerous to everyone but you keeps resurfacing every generation, dressed as something new.

📚 Books Mentioned

(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: https://amzn.to/4gbQLJ1
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: https://amzn.to/4geauYL
• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux: https://amzn.to/4qlGmPZ
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: https://amzn.to/3RVlHW9
• Beauty and the Beast by Madame de Villeneuve's: https://amzn.to/4gyXHkY
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: https://amzn.to/4ge5YcG
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: https://amzn.to/4g0wasD
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: https://amzn.to/3UiYs93
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: https://amzn.to/3UiYqOt
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness: https://amzn.to/4xGfbBA
• A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler: https://amzn.to/4x45nla
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: https://amzn.to/4zkVpNM

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes: https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija's Novels: https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

👉 CHAPTERS

00:00 Hybristophilia and the Dark Romance Controversy

01:06 A Surprise Co-Host and the Mailman Conundrum

06:47 From Wuthering Heights to Twilight: A Dark Romance History

12:35 Three Arguments in Defense of Dark Romance

23:04 Fiction as Coping: Does the Genre Actually Harm Readers?

29:13 The Misogyny Argument, Cutting Both Ways

38:58 Tropes Hollywood and Publishing Can't Quit

41:58 Why Women Are Drawn to Dangerous Men

49:07 Masculine and Feminine Energy, Tony Robbins and Polarity

1:04:27 What We're Reading: Book Recommendations

A viral tradwife thriller sends its heroine back to the actual 1850s life she was selling online. A 13th-century Belgian saint's miracles go "viral" long before the internet exists. Ksenija and Sue put the two side by side to ask why we build women up in public just to watch them fall, and whether the church controlling a saint's story is really so different from an algorithm controlling a creator's reach.

📚 Books Mentioned

(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: https://amzn.to/3UfhtJx
• Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards: https://amzn.to/4iaWL7y
• Canon by Paige Lewis: https://amzn.to/4xCofYb
• Whistler by Ann Patchett: https://amzn.to/4guFaWZ

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija's Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙 ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS

Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New episodes every Saturday.

👉 CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:14 The Trad Wife Fantasy
09:41 Where Yesteryear Goes Wrong
13:46 Dumping Non-Fiction and Reading Bad Books
19:04 Ksenija's Positive Social Media Experience
24:14 Losing Authenticity Online
30:05 Canticle: Miracles, Relics, and the Business of Sainthood
48:55 Freedom, Aging, and Who Gets to Be Free in Public
01:02:44 Our Podcasting Adventure
01:09:12 Reading Recommendations