The Lioness Origin Story Podcast
Welcome to Lioness Origin Story, a special mini-series podcast presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club. Each week co-hosts Shannon Morgan, Army Lioness Vet, and Daria Sommers, Filmmaker/Writer, present, along with special guests, true stories of women who participated in Team Lioness. The goal is to provide an historical counter to Taylor Sheridan’s fictional Special Ops: Lioness. As the hosts and their guests trace the evolution of Lioness Teams into Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams, the series will reveal how these new roles led to the dissolution of the Combat Exclusion Policy and the eventual opening up of military roles to women.
Listen on:
Lioness The Origin Story
Welcome to Lioness the Origin Story, a special mini-series podcast presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club.
Hosting Lioness will be Daria Sommers and Shannon Morgan, two women who, in different ways, were involved with the Lioness origin story.
In 2008 filmmaker and writer Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan released LIONESS, a documentary that revealed the history of a group of women support soldiers who went to Iraq in 2003 as mechanics, clerks and engineers but ended up serving as the original Lioness soldiers.
One of those Lioness soldiers was Shannon Morgan. An Army mechanic from Mena, Arkansas who served in Ramadi from 2003-2004. During the 2004 Battle for Ramadi, she was one of a group of Army Lioness soldiers attached to the 2/4 Marines during house to house searches. That put her at the center of some of the fiercest street fighting of the war. But, because the combat exclusion policy, when Shannon returned home, she had to fight to get the full extent of her service recognized and receive the benefits she was entitled to as a combat veteran.
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club:
www.veteransbreakfastclub.org
LIONESS
A feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers
Trailer: https://bit.ly/44GR6fV
Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Apple TV
Episodes
Friday Jul 28, 2023
Friday Jul 28, 2023
Joining Shannon Morgan and Daria Sommers for Episode 2 is Ranie Ruthig. Ranie served alongside Shannon in the 1st Engineer Battalion in Ramadi, Iraq. They recount some of the earliest Lioness missions, how their participation in the Lioness documentary (2008) led to their 2009 testimony on Capitol Hill which contributed to abolishing the Combat Exclusion Policy for women in 2013. As they explore the second episode of Paramount+'s SPECIAL OPS: LIONESS (The Beating) they comment on its themes: the reality of being a mom like Joe (Zoë Saldana) who deploys, the strains military service puts on families, how single parents like Neil (Dave Annable) cope, the morality of the military's extreme training which Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) must awfully endure, and the tight bonds formed by units that cannot be broken.
LionessA feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria SommersTrailer - https://bit.ly/44GR6fVAvailable for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org
Tuesday Jul 25, 2023
Tuesday Jul 25, 2023
Co-hosts Shannon Morgan, Army Lioness Vet, and Daria Sommers, Filmmaker/Writer explore the first episode of Special Ops: Lioness with an eye towards what elements ring true and how the show’s opening story resonates in the history of the Lioness program. Topics covered include Cruz’s reasons for joining up, Joe’s brief on the history of the Lioness program, the difficulties experienced upon returning home, going in blind and the embedded idea that women can’t just be super competent. They have to be superheroes.
LionessA feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria SommersTrailer - https://bit.ly/44GR6fVAvailable for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org