The Greeks first identified the Amazons ethnographically, as a nation of men and women distinguished by something outstanding in their gender relations. Later, any ambivalence or anxiety that knowledge of this alternative gender-neutral culture evoked among Greeks was played out in their mythic narratives about martial women.

Anyone who's watched 'The Hunger Games', or female archers, knows that that is an absolutely physiologically ridiculous idea.

We are used to thinking of Amazon myths in terms of violence against uppity women, but the ancient evidence also reveals a vision of gender equality.

The cultural center of Asia Minor, Pergamon boasted a vast library of 200,000 scrolls, a spectacular 10,000-seat theater, and a monumental Great Altar decorated with sculptures of the Olympian gods defeating the Giants. People came from all around the Mediterranean seeking cures at the famous Temple of Asclepius, god of medicine.

Education should be one of our top funding priorities; talking about it does not help the teachers and students who desperately need promises fulfilled.

Most people have to learn the words to the National Anthem before they sing it. I learned these words when I was a child in elementary school, so this is something that's been embedded in me ever since I was an adult.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.

Most of our physical education teachers were just teachers, and they had to do the extra stuff on their own. I remember very vividly that they would hold a cane pole between two of the students down low, and we would all jump over it. And they would raise it and raise it and raise it.