Liberating Motherhood

Epizode

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  S3 Ep21: Angela Saini: Who Benefits From Convincing Us Oppression is Natural? 05.08.2026 56min

  Supremacy culture wants to convince us all that it is inevitable. If oppression is natural, it’s hardly worth fighting, after all. Racism, sexism, and other systems of oppression have always weaponized science—and too many scientists have allowed themselves to be mouthpieces for oppressive ideologies. Angela Saini has written about the use and abuse of science to uphold oppression for years. Her books investigate the origins of misogyny, analyze how science is weaponized in service of oppression, and debunk common sexist and racist myths about human biology. In this episode, we talk about a range of topics, including:  The origins of patriarchy, and why patriarchy is social and not biological.  The relative recency of patriarchy, and why patriarchy has not always been a part of human history.  How biology is misused to uphold systems of oppression.  How marriage became an arm of the state, and how marriage and family enabled women’s oppression. Patriarchy as an accident, not an inevitability, and the role patrilocality played in its creation.  How myths about gender and biology, gender roles, and gender as natural or inevitable uphold patriarchy.  How scientific racism continues to influence medicine and politics. You can find the study I reference in the podcast here.  How racialized medicine can worsen outcomes in marginalized communities.  As always, if you like this podcast, please help support it by heart-reacting it, leaving a positive review on your favorite podcast platform, or sharing it with your friends. About Angela SainiAngela Saini is an award-winning journalist and Assistant Professor of Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She presents radio, podcasts, and television shows for the BBC among others, and her writing has appeared across the world, including in the Financial Times, National Geographic, Foreign Policy, and Wired.Angela’s 2023 book, The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule, was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Nonfiction and a Waterstones politics book of the year. Her 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science was published to enormous critical acclaim, and became a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the Hughes Prize, and the Foyles Book of the Year. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong was published in 2017 and named the Physics World book of the Year. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages.In 2020 Angela was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine, and in 2018 she was voted one of the most respected journalists in the UK. In 2015 she won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Kavli Science Journalism gold award for a BBC Radio 4 documentary about birdsong and human language. She has also received a best feature award from the Association of British Science Writers. Angela started her career with the British broadcaster ITN on its news trainee scheme, before joining the BBC as a reporter, where her six-month investigation into bogus universities featured on the flagship national News at Ten and won a Prix Circom European television news award.Angela has a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University, and a second Masters in Science and Security from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Between 2012 and 2013 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a 2022 Logan Nonfiction Fellow in New York and was in Berlin in summer 2022 as a resident scholar at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute. She has given distinguished and keynote lectures at universities across the world, including the 2022 Simonyi Lecture at Oxford, the Yale Poynter Fellowship lecture in 2022, and the Wollstonecraft Lecture at the London School of Economics in 2023. She was made an honorary fellow of her alma mater Keble College, Oxford in 2023.You can find Angela’s books, all books recommended on the podcast, and numerous reading lists on the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page. Angela’s latest book will be out in January of 2027, and you can preorder it now. 
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  S3 Ep20: Angela Jones: Sex as a Political Act 22.07.2026 53min

  No matter how much we try to relegate sexuality to the most private corner of our lives, it inevitably escapes. Sex is not really a private act. It’s a political one, which both influences and is influenced by our culture, politics, history, and more. Angela Jones’s new book, Sex in Public, names sex as a public act, and talks about what it means for our sexuality to be politically and socially constructed and reconstructed. She has so much wisdom on so many topics, and I was thrilled to get to talk to her. Some of the subjects we cover include:  Angela’s incredible new book, Sex in Public, which everyone should go out and buy immediately.  What truly comprehensive sex education actually looks like, and how parents can get better at talking to their kids about sex and sexuality. Teaching bodily autonomy and consent, and how we are teaching kids sexual ethics well before we talk to them about sex. How teaching kids consent can be an act of challenging authority, and why this is often difficult for parents.  Why sexuality cannot exist independence of politics and culture, and how this makes sex a political act.  Desirability politics, and how systems of power shape who and what we are attracted to. Sexuality as something that is constantly in flux—not a fixed identity. The hollowness of the notion of sexual empowerment, and how sex positivity has been reduced to the freedom to have sex.  About Angela JonesAngela Jones is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Jones’s research interests include sexualities; sex work; Black feminist theory and methods; trans studies; and African American political thought and protest. They are an award-winning teacher and writer, as well as a winner of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.Jones’s newest trade book, Sex in Public: The Transformative Social Power of Our Erotic Lives, will be published with Seal Press/Hachette in May 2026. Jones is also the author of the award-winning book Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Industry (NYU Press, 2020) and African American Civil Rights: Early Activism and the Niagara Movement (Bloomsbury, 2011). They are a co-author of Black Lives Matter: A Reference Handbook (2025, Bloomsbury) and co-editor of Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the 21st Century (NYU Press, 2024).Jones is the editor of the award-winning reference book, African American Activism and Political Engagement: An Encyclopedia of Empowerment (Bloomsbury, 2023). Jones is also a co-editor of the three-volume After Marriage Equality book series (Routledge, 2018). Jones has also edited two other anthologies: The Modern African American Political Thought Reader: From David Walker to Barack Obama (Routledge, 2012) and A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias (Palgrave, 2013).They are also the author of scholarly articles, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as The Black Scholar; Social Problems; Gender & Society; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Sexualities; Disability Studies Quarterly; Porn Studies; International Journal of Gender, Sexuality, and Law; Culture, Health, and Sexuality; Sociology Compass; Fat Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society; Sexuality and Culture; Sociological Focus; The Journal of Historical Sociology;and Interalia: a Journal of Queer Studies.You can learn more about Angela and her work on her website. 
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  S3 Ep19: The myth of misandry--and why hating men is not morally equivalent to hating women 15.07.2026 55min

  Rather than taking the summer entirely off, I’m reducing my podcasting frequency to every other week, and posting reruns of some of my favorite episodes during the off weeks. I’ll be back to full-time in the fall. Do I hate men? Should you? Yes. No. Maybe. Misogynist men love to weaponize false claims of misandry against women. In fact, one of the clearest signs that a man is a misogynist is that he thinks misandry is real, common, and a threat. Jeff and I have wanted to talk about bogus claims of misandry for a long time. Here’s the result. Some of the many topics we talk about in this podcast include:  Why we need to stop saying “sexual coercion” or “obligatory sex” and start calling it rape.  The history of the term “misandrist,” and why it’s always been a part of bad faith arguments against women’s rights.  Does Zawn hate men? (Jeff’s answers: “No. Yes. Not all men.”) Why so many men see movements for women’s rights as a threat.  Why men who actually like women are unthreatened by feminism.  Men’s frustration at having to actually work for things.  Jeff on the most pathetic kind of sex anyone can have.  Why misandry can never be analogous to misogyny. The disparity between Zawn and Jeff’s experiences complaining about poor medical care.  Why men are so committed to wasting so much of women’s time.  We end with our new feature, the Liberating Motherhood Complaint Box. This is where we address the whining, bloviating nonsense your husbands tell you about my podcast specifically, or feminism more generally. It culminates in Zawn referring to a man as a “loser bitch.” Make your partner’s ignorance famous, and subject him to my judgment! You can submit your own complaint for next month’s complaint box here. Please only use this form to submit complaints from men specifically about feminism or my podcast—not general complaints, not general questions, not general messages for me. If you need to contact me for something else, you can find forms for just about everything on the Liberating Motherhood website. We have new kittens, and they currently live in my office, which they are destroying. They are aspiring misandrists, and were quite interested in the podcast. For this reason, you’ll hear some background noises. Just remember that these minor annoyances come from these adorable angels: If you’d like to contribute a story for the podcast, you can submit it here. 
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  S3 Ep18: Valena Beety: The Criminalization of Mothers and Motherhood 08.07.2026 47min

  Two weeks ago, I interviewed Justine van der Leun about criminalized survival, and why women so often end up in prison for “crimes” of self-defense. The truth is that women often end up in prison for behaviors that aren’t criminal at all—not just for self-defense or for killing. Today we are talking about the widespread victimization of women at the hands of the legal system. Patriarchy specifically targets mothers, and women from oppressed groups, then weaponizes our identities. Sometimes it uses these identities to prosecute and incarcerate us. Attorney and activist Valena Beety has worked to overturn wrongful convictions, taught other lawyers about the injustices in the criminal justice system, and is now a powerful advocate for systemic change. She joined me on the podcast to discuss her new book, Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity. The ways our criminal justice system (and associated systems, like CPS) silence and control women.  How motherhood creates unique vulnerabilities within the criminal justice system. How women can end up in jail or prison even when they are innocent, and even when there was no crime at all.  The criminalization of tragedies: stillbirth, infant and child deaths, and miscarriages.  Prosecutions of abortions and miscarriages.  How our fear promotes victim-blaming, and how victim-blaming revictimizes women who survive trauma.  Criminalized victimization, and how the legal system weaponizes women’s trauma against them.  Bias in prosecution, and how prosecutors get tunnel vision and decide a woman deserves punishment no matter what.  The ways in which we criminalize and punish disabled mothers.  How a coercive system weaponizes women’s trauma, and can easily induce false confessions.  Pink Crime is an incredible book. Read it. Buy it. Give it to your friends. Pre-orders matter greatly for the success of a book, and they show publishers the importance of feminist work. I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering it. Valena has graciously offered a coupon code for my readers, that you can use to buy her book here. Simply enter code I’ve listed all of Valena’s books, as well as all of the books I mention on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. The excellent paper by Valena that I reference in the podcast is here. About Valena BeetyA wrongful convictions litigator and former federal prosecutor, Valena Beety is the McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington Maurer School of Law and a co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project. Her book Manifesting Justice received a Gold Medal in Women’s Issues from the Independent Publishers Book Award, and her coursebook The Wrongful Convictions Reader is used in classrooms nationwide to teach about wrongful convictions. Her latest book, Pink Crime, examines the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer IdentityShe lives in Indiana with her wife, daughter, and tripod dog.
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  S3 Ep17: Justine van der Leun: Criminalized Survival 24.06.2026 1h

  In patriarchy, there is no sure escape from violent relationships. The courts and police may not help. Friends and family may turn their backs. And even when a woman’s life is in danger, she does not have the same right to self-defense as a man. Journalist Justine van der Leun began researching this phenomenon when she learned about Nikki Addimando, a woman who killed her abusive partner in self-defense. Thanks to a grassroots campaign and some great lawyers, Nikki has now been freed, but just a few years ago, Nikki was sentenced to 19 years to life. Justine wondered how many other Nikkis were out there. Experts told her that jails and prisons are full of women just like Nikki. Her new book, Unreasonable Women, is about what we do to women who kill in self-defense, as well as the patriarchal norms that reinforce men’s right to violence—and women’s right only to die from men’s violence. In this conversation, we confront the reality of criminalized survival, and patriarchy’s unquenchable desire to punish abuse victims. Some of the topics we cover include:  Criminalized survival, and why our legal system ignores women’s right to self-defense.  Why being in an abusive relationship is a risk factor for ending up in prison.  The crime of surviving as an abuse victim.  The common theme that government will spend few or no resources to help impoverished kids, abused kids, or battered women, but will quickly and competently put those same people in prison, expending massive resources to do so.  The expectation that women being attacked by men will apply a perfect legal standard of self-defense, exert more self-control than we expect from trained police officers, and behave like perfect victims at all times.  The concept of violence against women as regulated rather than illegal.  Stories of three women who killed in self-defense, and how all three ended up incarcerated.  Unreasonable Women is out now. I hope you’ll buy it, since doing so supports feminist scholarship and shows publishers that we want more feminist work. You can find Justine’s book, as well as all books I mention on the podcast, along with several reading lists, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.About Justine van der Leun Justine van der Leun is a journalist, author, and creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Believe Her. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The Guardian. She has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, and PEN America, and more. Justine brings both deep investigative reporting and a thoughtful, engaging interview presence to conversations about violence, justice, and survival.
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  S3 Ep16: (Rerun) Loretta Ross: Calling In, Building Sustainable Activism, and Changing Minds 17.06.2026 55min

  Rather than taking the summer entirely off, I’m reducing my podcasting frequency to every other week, and posting reruns of some of my favorite episodes during the off weeks. I’ll be back to full-time in the fall. In the meantime, I’ve made no secret that this one of my all-time favorite episodes, and that interviewing Loretta Ross is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. I hope you love this episode; it’s so important for us to cultivate the skills Loretta teaches. Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me. How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological brutality, and worst of all, fractured and less powerful movements. Lasting change requires us to build solidarity across difference. At the very least, we must be able to resolve small disagreements. Ideally, though, we have to bring more people into the fold—including people we really don’t like, including people with whom we have very significant moral disagreements. I’ve often noted that the anti-choice movement succeeded by standing in lockstep with one another, no matter how much they hated each other. They built a movement for 50 years, and they succeeded. We can learn a lot from them. But leftist coalitions are diverse and highly principled. These are good things, but they can make it challenging to work together. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can do this. And then I found Loretta Ross’s book, Calling In. It has helped me to consider my own role in toxic call-out culture, and to seize opportunities to build consensus and coalitions rather than elevating myself and my ego. This, I think, is the only way we move forward. There’s lots of advice about how to be a better activist, what this moment means, and how to deal with people who disagree with us. I think the most useful advice comes from people who have actually succeeded at sustaining a lifetime of activism. Loretta has changed hearts and minds over and over, working with people many of us would never even want to talk to. She has done the work that progress demands, and now she’s here to teach us how to do it, too. You’ll recognize some of what we discuss from my earlier episode about sustaining hope as an activist. I cannot over-emphasize how much Loretta’s work has shifted my consciousness and influenced my own work, and I hope you find her wisdom as valuable as I do. Some of the topics we cover in this conversation include:  Toxic call-out culture, and how it is destroying individual well-being as well as activist movements.  How childhood wounds create toxic shame that we then foist onto our activist colleagues.  How we build resilience and capacity to work across difference.  Calling out vs. calling in, and how we know when to do each.  Loretta’s experiences working with rapists and deprogramming white supremacist.  How our egos can undermine our activism, and how we resist that temptation.  The components of an effective call-in, and how to know when a call-in is likely to work.  “When you ask people to give up hate, you must be prepared to be there for them when they do.”  The concept of the victimized violator—the person who feels entitled to violate others because of their own victimization.  How to respond to a call-out or call-in.  Can we use calling in with ICE officers?  How we can acknowledge the humanity of those doing harm without losing sight of their victims.  How we sustain hope and avoid despair.  About Loretta Ross Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights, and an inductee into the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame.Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video.Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel is available now!Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.You can find all of Loretta’s books, as well as all books recommended on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page.
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  S3 Ep15: Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno: Surviving Family Court and the Normalization of Abuse 10.06.2026 57min

  “There is always a reason for people to hate on women.” — Elizabeth DalgarnoWhy is it so hard for victims of coercive control, domestic violence, and other forms of abuse to be believed? This is the subject Elizabeth Dalgarno has devoted much of her work to. A leading researcher on coercive control, Dr. Dalgarno has written extensively on abusive relationships, including on how they affect children and why family court norms are so harmful for victims. No matter where you live, the court system was never set up to protect women and children. So what do we do? How can we survive? Survival begins with understanding the severity of the problem. In this podcast episode, Dr. Dalgarno and I talk about abuse as the normal state of heterosexual relationships, and how family court systems reinforce the abuse. Some of the topics we cover include:  The myth of high-conflict divorce, and the reality of victims and perpetrators. How family courts victimize women, and why so many women enter family court systems totally unprepared.  How patriarchy has weaponized the notion of false memories. For decades, therapists of dubious skill and integrity induced false memories in their clients. This caused real harm that has continued for decades. But real abusers have weaponized the notion of false memories to silence people with very real, very true memories. This has even occurred in documented, proven cases of abuse, such as with Jeffrey Epstein.  The false notion of parental alienation syndrome. The creator of this concept asserted that children “seduce” their fathers, and implied that pedophilia is “natural.”  How trauma undermines the believeability of victim-survivors, and why victims rarely act the way we expect them to. How gender norms create impossible mothering standards that then harm victims in family court.  Why sexual abuse of children is so common.  Why outcomes in family court are not women’s faults, and why the bad outcomes are the system working as intended.  Strategies that may help in family court.  A quick note: Dr. Dalgarno’s discussion of the family court system addresses norms that pervade across legal systems, but the specific family court system she speaks about is the British system. Not all countries have private and public courts, but the general principles Dr. Dalgarno speaks to will apply everywhere. About Elizabeth DalgarnoDr. Elizabeth Dalgarno is a world-leading coercive control researcher and advocate. She is the Director and Founder of SHERA Research Group, a global collective researching the harms to health and human rights violations against women and children in the family courts and other institutions. She is also a Lecturer at the University of Manchester, England. Elizabeth has worked in public and private health and social care for over 20 years specialising in challenging violence against women and children and systemic inequalities for all people in law, health and social care.You can read her incredible Substack here. 
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  S3 Ep14: Rerun: Kate Manne: Understanding the Logic of Misogyny 03.06.2026 1h

  Exciting news: I’m writing a book. Less exciting news: This means I have a little less time right now. It’s also summer break, which means things are in a chronic state of chaos.Lots of podcasts take breaks over the summer, but I didn’t want to do that, especially since I have SO MANY amazing guests lined up for the summer. So instead, I’ll be mixing in some rerun podcasts this summer, to give myself a little more editing time and breathing room. You can expect a new podcast episode at least every other week, with reruns sprinkled in between. This chat with Kate Manne was one of my favorites, and I hope you love it too.Misogyny isn’t really about hating women. After all, if pure hate explained everything, wouldn’t that mean that only mean men abuse women, and that misogynists never seek relationships with women? Men are able to mistreat women they claim to love because of the internal logic of misogyny. They’re not irrational or unhinged; they’re following a set of rules rooted in entitlement.Kate Manne is a philosopher who focuses on understanding what’s behind the misogynistic behavior patriarchy creates and enables. She envisions misogyny as a sort of disciplinary tool for reinforcing gendered norms, and preserving men’s access to resources—especially the highly valuable resource of women’s labor.We cover a lot of ground in this podcast, including:* The reflexive denial in the media of misogyny.* Misogyny as a system for enforcing men’s entitlement to women’s labor.* Why misogyny is not random and not mental illness, but instead a set of corrupt moral values that reflect the values of the wider culture.* Misogyny as more than mere hatred of women, and why certain women may be more impacted by misogyny than others.* How not to hate your husband after children…or maybe you should just hate him.* The normalization of all forms of violence.* The parallels between misogyny and fascism.* Fatphobia as an inevitable byproduct of misogyny.About Kate ManneKate Manne is an associate professor at the Sage School of philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social, and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024), a National Book Award finalist in non-fiction. In addition to academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Time. She writes a substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia, and their intersection.If you like this podcast or find my work valuable, I hope you’ll consider supporting it! Your paid support ensures I never have to take advertiser dollars, and am beholden only to my readership. You’ll also get access to one more podcast episode each month, eight additional pieces of written work, and membership in the Liberating Motherhood Community.You can also support this podcast for free! Heart-reacting makes a huge difference, as does commenting and sharing on social media. If you listen to this podcast on a podcast platform, please leave a positive review; it makes a huge difference. Oh, and tell the people you love about this podcast too!
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  S3 Ep13: Inimai Chettiar: Fighting for Women's Legal Rights 20.05.2026 58min

  I’ve often said that there’s a concerted effort to get people to hate lawyers, and it’s because when people hate lawyers, they won’t assert or even learn about their own rights. Lawyers have helped lead every movement for social justice, and in the United States, are behind every imaginable civil rights gain. Inimai Chettiar, an American attorney and President of A Better Balance, has used the legal system to fight for a more just world for two decades. She began her career working to end mass incarceration, and is now fighting for the rights of working mothers. This diversity of experience lends her unique insight into the American legal system. In our conversation, we cover a wide range of topics, including:  How to make the legal system work for women, instead of always against us.  Inimai’s work at A Better Balance, including a lawsuit against Amazon for abuse of pregnant workers.  The fight for paid leave at work, and the role it plays in the broader fight for women’s equality.  How mass incarceration affects women.  What people get wrong about the legal system, and how it affects their ability to fight for their own rights.  IVF and its shortcomings. Inimai has had two children via IVF, and has researched and written extensively about IVF, infertility and older women, and the specific issues women of color undergoing fertility treatments face. This is a must listen if you struggle with infertility or hope to have children in your forties.  About Inimai ChettiarInimai Chettiar is President of A Better Balance. She leads the organization’s pioneering efforts to advance fair and supportive work-family policies like paid family and medical leave, paid sick time, and fair and flexible scheduling, and to combat discrimination against pregnant people and family caregivers in the workplace. She is a leading civil rights attorney and justice advocate with more than two decades of experience leveraging the law to advance transformative reforms. With deep experience in litigation, advocacy, coalition building, and communications, Chettiar’s approach to serving as A Better Balance’s President is framed around the intersectionality between social justice, racial justice, and workplace policies that advance meaningful change for women and families. Her personal experiences also drive her passion for A Better Balance’s mission to build a future where all workers can care for themselves and their loved ones, without risking their economic security.Chettier was appointed as President of A Better Balance in 2024. Previously, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the Justice Action Network, the nation’s largest bipartisan criminal justice reform organization. Her leadership and coalition building helped secure the passage of the First Step Act, which released over 30,000 people from prison, the Fair Chance Act, and other key federal legislation. Chettiar also served as the Director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she established the Center as a national leader in ending mass incarceration, authored groundbreaking reports on crime and incarceration, positioned criminal justice as an issue central to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the national narrative, worked to transform law enforcement. Through Chettiar’s leadership, mass incarceration became recognized as more than an issue of criminal justice reform and was successfully framed around the deep and generational impact it has on families. She also served as Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, and Litigation Associate at Debevosie & Plimpton LLP. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Law School, is widely published in numerous journals, reports, and books, and is quoted extensively across top tier national media outlets.
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  S3 Ep12: Stefanie O'Connell: The Ambition Penalty 06.05.2026 1h 2min

  Mainstream career advice for women loves to pretend we can’t possibly know even the most basic facts about having a career. We tell women to ask for a raise, as if they don’t know they work for money. We tell them to “lean in,” as if the problem is just that no one ever bothered telling them to try. We tell them to communicate better at work, as if women have never learned to talk, and as if men are known for their exceptional communication.It’s very similar to how we talk about domestic labor. We insist on locating the problem in individual women rather than acknowledging the political reality. The truth is that women are outpacing men on almost every imaginable metric: college graduation, law and medical school admissions, and more. Yet our hard work and competence never seem to translate into fair pay, equal respect, or even an acknowledgment that most women work. Stefanie O’Connell’s The Ambition Penalty takes a hard look at the double binds and misogyny women face at work. She’s a brilliant speaker and writer, and I learned so much talking to her. Her book will be out in two weeks, but pre-orders are live now (and very important for publisher numbers). You can find her book, as well as all books I talk about on the podcast, and a list of book recommendations, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. If you are in New York City, I hope you’ll consider attending Stefanie’s book launch event.About Stefanie O’ConnellStefanie O’Connell is an award-winning journalist and author of “The Ambition Penalty: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up– and Then Pushes Them Down.” Her work dismantles the myths keeping women from equitable pay, leadership and power — one data point at a time.With bylines in Slate, Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today and Business Insider, Stefanie exposes how power and gender collide to keep women “in their place.” She also wrote, hosted and co-produced the WEBBY winning podcast, “Money Confidential” for REAL SIMPLE magazine. Stefanie has appeared on ABC World News, CBSN, Fox Business, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, The Doctors and local news stations across the US. An honors graduate of New York University, Stefanie lives in New York City with her daughter.Follow Stefanie on Instagram here.Follow Stefanie on Threads here. Follow Stefanie on TikTok here. Follow Stefanie on LinkedIn here. 
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  S3 Ep11: Cordelia Fine: Debunking Sex Difference Myths 15.04.2026 50min

  You’re being lied to about gender difference science. Researchers are inflating, overstating, and falsifying their data, or building biases into the research that render it unreliable. Stories about research inflate the limited differences these flawed studies find, and parenting advice suggests that we should treat girls and boys as radically different types of humans. So we do exactly that, and then we insist that different outcomes mean that gender differences must be innate and unchangeable. No matter what researchers see in scans of female brains—and even when they see different things in different brains—they conclude that their data prove that women are naturally and inevitably more emotional than men. Lots of activity in a particular brain region, limited activity in that same region, lots of activity in some women and limited activity in others—it’s all used as evidence to support the same bias. This research is everywhere, and everyone seems to “know” that the differences between men and women are significant and vast. When you dig into the research, though, that turns out not to be the case. The challenge is that most of us lack the expertise and time to read the research—especially since the promulgators of scientific sexism are constantly producing more research (and more questionable research). Cordelia Fine is a researcher who argues that the science is weak, the assumptions underlying it are flawed, and that the goal isn’t scientific truth or progress. She’s written extensively about harmful gender difference science, and I was so thrilled to bring her on the podcast. Some of the topics we discuss include: The myriad problems with studies of sex differences: research that doesn’t prove what it claims to, popular media that overstates research claims, and more.  The false assumptions that go into gender difference research, and how those assumptions affect research outcomes.  The misrepresentation, and occasional outright fabrication, of scientific research.  The cornucopia of myths about testosterone specifically, and hormones more generally, that color our perceptions about gender.  The numerous forces putting gender role pressure on children, including before they are even born.  The normalization of gender roles in casual social relationships, and how often these issues come up in parenting small talk.  Why something being biological does not mean it is innate, inevitable, or unchangeable.  Spurious results, and the replication crisis in behavioral science.  The just-so stories we tell to understand research findings and defend the existence of gender differences.  The weaponization of perimenopause to stigmatize and dismiss women.  Find Cordelia’s books, all of the books recommended on the podcast, and numerous reading lists at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. About Cordelia FineCordelia Fine is an academic and writer. Her work analyses scientific and popular biological explanations of behavioral sex differences and workplace gender inequalities, explores the effects of gender-related attitudes and biases on judgments and decision-making, and contributes to debates about workplace gender equality. She was recently named a “living legend” of research by The Australian.She is the author of Patriarchy Inc., Testosterone Rex, Delusions of Gender and A Mind of Its Own and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Among other accolades, Testosterone Rex won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize. Delusions of Gender was listed in ‘Ten books about women that will change your life’ (Sunday Times), ‘22 books women think men should read’ (Huffington Post), ‘Top 10 books on women in the past 30 years’ (The Australian) and the New York Public Library’s Essential Reads on Feminism, 100 Years After the 19th Amendment, among others. In recognition of her work on the understanding of gender stereotypes, challenging gender perceptions and contributions to public discourse to close the gender gap, Cordelia Fine was awarded the 2018 Edinburgh Medal by the City of Edinburgh Council, to honor men and women of science who have made a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity. Cordelia Fine has degrees from Oxford University, Cambridge University and UCL and is now a professor in the History & Philosophy of Science programme in the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.
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  S3 Ep10: TJ Raphael: Coercive Adoption, Liberty Lost, and Who Gets to Be a Mother 08.04.2026 57min

  “The adoption industry needs vulnerable pregnant women.” — TJ RaphaelWho gets to be a mother? And who gets to decide? This is the question at the heart of TJ Raphael’s incredible podcast series, Liberty Lost. Much of the adoption industry treats women as vessels for someone else’s child. Their trauma, their desires, their beliefs do not matter. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the right-wing adoption industry, where women and girls are often coerced or even forced into giving up their babies. Reproductive justice demands not only that women have the right not to have children, but also that women have the right to have and raise their children if they want. We see over and over again how patriarchy undermines both via abusive ideas about single mothers, sexuality, motherhood, and child development. There is no doubt that some women truly do wish to give their babies up for adoption, and that not all adoptions are coercive. But the data suggest that coercive, ideology-based adoptions may be the norm. Up to 80% of adoptions are through religious institutions. Moreover, most women who give their babies up for adoption say that, if their financial situation were better, they would not give up their babies. In her podcast series, TJ digs into just one religious institution: the Liberty University Godparent Home. It markets itself as a safe and supportive space for young mothers, but TJ’s podcast series reveals the coercive tactics it uses to take women’s babies. Research consistently shows that women who give up their babies for adoption experience intense grief and trauma. This is a fact that compels the question: Why are so many organizations pouring so much money into taking women’s babies rather than helping them to keep them? You can listen to Liberty Lost here. About TJ RaphaelT. J. Raphael is an award-winning investigative journalist focusing on the intersection of reproductive health, politics, and science. In June 2025, she released the multi-episode audio documentary Liberty Lost with Wondery, one of the world’s leading podcast production companies. The series dives deep into a modern-day maternity home where motherhood is treated as a privilege, not a right. The show paints a vivid picture that exposes the coercion and manipulation birth mothers often experience across the adoption industry. Following its release, Liberty Lost quickly climbed Apple’s coveted Top 200 Podcasts chart, topping out as the No. 2 series in America, and reaching No. 1 in their Society & Culture section. The show was praised by critics across the globe for its raw vulnerability and startling revelations, and won Gold at the 2025 Signal Awards for Best Documentary. For her work on Liberty Lost, T. J. won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for investigative reporting, and she is currently nominated by the Podcast Academy for an Ambie Award for best reporting.Before her time with Wondery, T. J. was an on-air host, reporter, and senior producer for Sony’s Global Podcast Division. Two of her most notable podcasts with Sony include Cover Up: The Pill Plot, about the American abortion wars, and BioHacked: Family Secrets, about the shadowy business of sperm and egg donation.Prior to Sony, T. J. was part of the leadership team overseeing Slate Magazine’s podcast network, which garnered 180 million downloads a year. She began her career in audio journalism in 2013 when she took on a multifaceted role at WNYC — the largest public radio station in America.T. J. began her career in print journalism, with reporting and editorial roles at The Village Voice, The New York Daily News, and The Legislative Gazette, grounding her audio work in traditional investigative and accountability reporting.T. J. is mixed race — Puerto Rican and Irish — and was born and raised in the New York City metro area. She is the first in her family to graduate from college.Today, T. J. lives in the world’s borough — Queens. When she’s not making podcasts, she likes to take trips to ride the Coney Island Cyclone, and spend time with her husband, Christopher, her border collie Smokey, and her Great Pyrenees, Cooper.
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  S3 Ep9: Jennie Young: Dating More Safely in a Patriarchy 01.04.2026 53min

  Patriarchy destroys relationships, and it has turned dating into a nightmare. Jennie Young is fighting back with her Burned Haystack method, and now the method is a book. Through her work, Jennie endeavors to teach women to detect red flags before they become obvious, and to thwart abuse before it happens. Dating is the most dangerous thing most of us do, and I have no doubt that Jennie is saving lives. In this podcast episode, Jennie and I discuss:  Why dating is so awful, and why men seem like they’re getting worse.  What the Burned Haystack method is, and how it can reduce the stress and misery of dating.  Specific rhetorical and behavioral patterns to look out for in early dating.  Why dating advice really is a matter of life and death.  And much more!  The first date video I mentioned early in the podcast is here. Jeff and I discuss the Application to be Zawn’s Boyfriend here. Jennie Young’s book will be out April 7th. If you want publishers to take on more feminist authors, please consider pre-ordering. Pre-orders are a huge determinant of a book’s success, and you can create a more thriving marketplace for all feminist authors by buying Jennie’s book. About Jennie YoungJennie Young is a professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, specializing in applied rhetoric, humor, and feminism. She holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and discourse studies from Case Western Reserve University and a satire writing certificate from Second City Chicago. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, Ms. Magazine, HuffPost, and others and covered by major media outlets such as The New York Times, RollingStone, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal.Visit Jennie at her website here, and be sure to check out her Substack. You can join her man-free support group on Facebook.You can preorder her book, Burn the Haystack, here.Find all books referenced on the podcast, as well as additional book recommendations, here.
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  S3 Ep8: Soraya Chemaly: Male Supremacy 11.03.2026 42min

  Why is misogyny so widespread, even when men claim to love and care about women, even among those who believe they are feminists? Male supremacy helps explain this phenomenon. The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism defines male supremacy as follows: [A] cultural, political, economic, and social system, in which cisgender men disproportionately control status, power, and resources, and women, trans men, and non-binary people are subordinated. Such systems are underpinned by an ideology of male supremacism, the belief in cisgender men’s superiority and right to dominate and control others. While male supremacism also intersects with other axes of oppression, such as racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and heterosexism, it motivates and undergirds the types of events described above. Male supremacism manifests in various ways, including physical and sexual violence, militarism, and exertion of control over women’s, trans men’s, and non-binary people’s bodies. These norms pervade everything we do, even if we rarely or never speak about them out loud. Soraya Chemaly has been writing about, and fighting, male supremacy for decades. Her new book, “All We Want is Everything,” analyzes male supremacy, cogently demonstrates its existence, and offers insight on how we build a better world. I truly loved this book. It’s so tightly argued, chock full of accessible statistics. It might be the book to give to the man in your life, if only to see that his beliefs do not change in response to new information. This is Soraya’s second appearance on the podcast, and I’m so lucky we got to talk again. In this episode, we discuss a wide range of topics, such as:  What male supremacy is, and how it interlocks with other systems of oppression.  Why and how male supremacy conceals its own existence.  The myth of a boy crisis in education, and the social purposes it serves.  The norm of affirmative action for men in colleges and elsewhere.  How schools reinforce gendered labor in parenting and marriage.  Men’s refusal to accept anything women do as work.  The weaponization of women’s fatigue, and why depriving women of rest plays such an important role in their oppression.  The nature of activism as a group struggle across generations, and how we sustain activism when we become demoralized.  You can find “All We Want is Everything,” all of Soraya’s books, and all of the books I mention on the podcast at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. About Soraya ChemalySoraya Chemaly is an award-winning author and activist, who writes son topics related to gender norms, inclusivity, social justice, free speech, sexualized violence, and technology. She is the director and co-founder of Women’s Media Center Speech Project. She is also the author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, The Resilience Myth, and the newly released All We Want is Everything.You can find her articles in numerous publications and anthologies, in talks and media appearances, and just about everywhere anyone is discussing gender.
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  S3 Ep7: Sarah Ruden: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women 04.03.2026 1h 5min

  I wrote recently about how men are using AI to prop up their belief in their own superiority. This propaganda is nothing new. Men have, for thousands of years, used every tool at their disposal to spread false ideas about women’s inferiority and demonic nature. Sarah Ruden is a translator, a classicist, and the author of Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women. She came on the podcast to discuss her new book, which outlines how popular literature and culture have long normalized women’s subjugation by spreading lies about women. We ended up having a sprawling conversation during which we talked not just about this book, but about her translations work, Biblical views of womanhood, and so much more. It was such a treat to get to pick such a brilliant mind. No matter what you’re interested in, I think you’ll find something compelling in this episode. A few of the topics we discuss include:  The long history of constraining women’s reproductive rights in service of men, including anti-abortion poems by the poet Ovid.  The alliance between anti-abortion ideology and authoritarianism.  Why history is more than a set of facts, and why it matters who tells stories from the past.  What Sarah has learned as a translator of the Biblical Gospels, and why good translations are so crucial to our understanding of the world. Sarah talks specifically about how the canonical translations of the Gospels suppress women’s point of view and demean women.  Why our beliefs do not spring up out of nowhere. Not only is propaganda everywhere, but it has always been everywhere.  The similarities between red pill bros and the men who have translated sacred texts and beloved secular literature.  The line from Roman anti-abortion rhetoric to the rhetoric of today’s far right, including a focus on genocide.  The role of anti-abortion politics in imperialism.  Why the anti-abortion movement has co-opted the Holocaust to justify extreme violence.  The Catholic church’s shift toward more flexibility on everything except for abortion.  About Sarah RudenSarah Ruden is a leading translator of the ancient literature of the West. In a career spanning both essential Greek and Roman Classics and sacred literature, she has set new standards for accuracy, stylistic integrity, and accessibility. Her work, including cultural and human-rights journalism, is deeply concerned with questions of power and truth, in accordance with her Quaker faith. She has won Guggenheim, Whiting, and Silvers grants, and numerous other awards.She has a PhD in classical philology from Harvard University.Her latest book, Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women, came out March 3rd. You can find this wonderful book, as well as several of Sarah’s other books, in the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.
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  S3 Ep6: Emma Katz: Why Abusive Men Are Not Good Parents (re-release) 18.02.2026 1h 19min

  I’m on vacation this month, so am re-releasing this excellent episode with Dr. Emma Katz. Content warning: This podcast extensively discusses all forms of intimate partner violence, some child abuse, and briefly discusses the death of a child, but not in graphic detail. Intimate partner violence is much more than physical violence. Every physically violent perpetrator was, for a time, not physically violent. The emotionally abusive, degrading, and controlling environment these perpetrators create is ultimately what enables the physical violence. Our society recognizes only a very limited number of behaviors as abusive, which is why so many women feel shocked and stunned when their partners finally become violent. When you understand coercive control, though, it becomes clear that the violence is part of a controlling strategy. Coercive control is the environment abusers create, and it’s much more—and much worse—than just violence. While it is deeply isolating, it follows very predictable patterns. In this podcast, we talk about topics such as:  What coercive control is, and why it is the norm in heterosexual relationships.  Why a relationship can be abusive even if there is no physical violence.  How to tell if your relationship is abusive.  Why abusers abuse their partners.  The most common strategies abusers use.  Why abusers cannot be good fathers. Helping a child recover from exposure to domestic violence.  How gender socialization renders women more vulnerable to abuse.  Risk factors for the father weaponizing the child against the mother.  Emma Katz, a world-renowned expert on coercive control, focuses her research and writing on the effects of coercive control on children. She dispels the notion that a man can abuse the mother but still be a “good dad,” and talks extensively about how courts often replicate abusive norms. These coercively controlling men might seem cunning, but they’re largely following the same playbook. Understanding that playbook empowers women to recognize abuse earlier, to identify when it is happening, and potentially, to leave. I highly recommend Dr. Katz’s Substack. Find that here. Read more about her on her website, or buy her incredible book here. 
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  S3 Ep5: Loretta Ross: Calling In, Building Sustainable Activism, and Changing Minds 11.02.2026 55min

  Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me. How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological brutality, and worst of all, fractured and less powerful movements. Lasting change requires us to build solidarity across difference. At the very least, we must be able to resolve small disagreements. Ideally, though, we have to bring more people into the fold—including people we really don’t like, including people with whom we have very significant moral disagreements. I’ve often noted that the anti-choice movement succeeded by standing in lockstep with one another, no matter how much they hated each other. They built a movement for 50 years, and they succeeded. We can learn a lot from them. But leftist coalitions are diverse and highly principled. These are good things, but they can make it challenging to work together. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can do this. And then I found Loretta Ross’s book, Calling In. It has helped me to consider my own role in toxic call-out culture, and to seize opportunities to build consensus and coalitions rather than elevating myself and my ego. This, I think, is the only way we move forward. There’s lots of advice about how to be a better activist, what this moment means, and how to deal with people who disagree with us. I think the most useful advice comes from people who have actually succeeded at sustaining a lifetime of activism. Loretta has changed hearts and minds over and over, working with people many of us would never even want to talk to. She has done the work that progress demands, and now she’s here to teach us how to do it, too. You’ll recognize some of what we discuss from my earlier episode about sustaining hope as an activist. I cannot over-emphasize how much Loretta’s work has shifted my consciousness and influenced my own work, and I hope you find her wisdom as valuable as I do. Some of the topics we cover in this conversation include:  Toxic call-out culture, and how it is destroying individual well-being as well as activist movements.  How childhood wounds create toxic shame that we then foist onto our activist colleagues.  How we build resilience and capacity to work across difference.  Calling out vs. calling in, and how we know when to do each.  Loretta’s experiences working with rapists and deprogramming white supremacist.  How our egos can undermine our activism, and how we resist that temptation.  The components of an effective call-in, and how to know when a call-in is likely to work.  “When you ask people to give up hate, you must be prepared to be there for them when they do.”  The concept of the victimized violator—the person who feels entitled to violate others because of their own victimization.  How to respond to a call-out or call-in.  Can we use calling in with ICE officers?  How we can acknowledge the humanity of those doing harm without losing sight of their victims.  How we sustain hope and avoid despair.  About Loretta Ross Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights, and an inductee into the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame.Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video.Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel is available now!Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.You can find all of Loretta’s books, as well as all books recommended on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page.
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  S3 Ep4: Things Change Because We Change Them: A Zawn-Only Podcast Episode 04.02.2026 30min

  This is the first podcast episode I’ve done by myself, because I wanted to speak directly to all of you. If you like it, I may do more. On a recent AMA, someone asked me how I sustain hope when I’m surrounded by horror and despair. Here’s what I told her: I know that the only thing that makes things actually hopeless is giving up hope. If my foremothers could fight through coverture, through legal rape, through legal violence, if other women could continue to fight through slavery, through a Holocaust, through witch burnings, through endless war, then surely I can honor them by continuing to fight. I will not allow despair to cause me to drop my link in the chain that extends to my ancestors and toward freedom. I decided to record this podcast episode because so many of you have contacted me wondering how we can possibly keep going with things as terrifying as they are. I’ve been an activist for a long time, and I’ve been lucky enough to learn from many elders (several of whom will be on this podcast in the next few weeks). I hope that I can offer you some strategies for thriving. I also know there’s value in hearing another human voice—hopefully someone you trust—reassuring you. So I decided to record this, off the cuff, by myself. I could have edited. I could have gone back and added more, and I probably should have taken a decent photo rather than a frazzled selfie. I think, though, there’s sometimes value in showing up as we are, and in hearing someone else free-associate. I wanted to deliver this message as quickly as possible, rather than as perfectly as possible, so I hope it still has value. In this episode, I talk about how I sustain hope, why I think you need to sustain hope, and how to build effective activist networks. If you’re out there doing the work, I love you for that. Let’s join hands together and get as much done as we can. I hope you like this episode. I hope it helps you. 
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  S3 Ep3: Kiki Bryant/The Uppity Negress: Labor Diggers 21.01.2026 1h 3min

  “Black men have been held accountable for things they didn’t do for so long, that we have forgotten how to hold them accountable for the things they do.” — Kiki BryantMen are stealing women’s lives by stealing their time. So why is it that we have widespread notions of women as spoiled, entitled gold diggers? The words we use matter. They focus our attention and make it easier (or harder) to speak about a topic. This is a sweeping conversation that covers a lot of ground. Some of what we talk about:  How social media is using bans without any due process to suppress the voices of minority creators. Kiki lost her Facebook account, and we talk extensively about how many other writers this has happened to, drawing on research Kiki conducted. Social media has the power not just to silence people, but to remove everything they’ve ever previously said.  The importance of memory in constructing philosophical beliefs, and how social media bans undermine collective memory.  Kiki’s framework of labor diggers.  The economic impact of being the default parent.  Labor digging begins in childhood, and how gendered childhood norms set people up for miserable heterosexual relationships.  The effects of mass incarceration on Black relationships specifically, and how this ongoing trauma contributes both to lower Black marriage rates and to misogynoir.  The commonalities between Black manhood and white womanhood. The unique challenges facing Black women leaving abusive Black men.  The pick-me feminist: the feminist who wants to talk about how she’s not like all the other feminists.  Competitive parenting, breastfeeding while Black, and the use of parenting culture to reinforce hierarchy.  About Kiki BryantKiki Bryant, known online as the Uppity Negress, is a mother, writer, and sociopolitical critic located in Chicago, IL.Follow her on Facebook here. Check out her amazing Substack here. Follow her on threads here. Buy her books on her website, which also has other merch and a ton of great information. 
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  S3 Ep2: Abigail Leonard: Four Mothers, and How Cultural Norms Influence Experiences of Motherhood 14.01.2026 1h

  If you like this episode or this podcast, please consider heart-reacting, sharing, commenting, or leaving a positive online review. It helps the podcast continue to attract great guests!Motherhood is a cultural, political experience. But in many places, especially the United States, we pretend culture doesn’t exist, and that everything about motherhood is both inevitable and an individual problem. Abigail Leonard is an American journalist who, inspired by her own experiences living abroad in Tokyo, set out to explore how different cultures support (or don’t support) mothers, and how this influences outcomes for everyone. Abigail’s book highlights how cultural norms determine the bounds within which we mother. And while the social networks and community support women can access vary greatly from nation to nation, the profound impacts of patriarchy persist across cultures, making motherhood much harder than it needs to be. In this podcast, we talk about:  Similarities and differences between motherhood experiences in Japan, Kenya, Finland, and the United States.  The social structures that can make motherhood easier or more difficult.  How men’s refusal to participate equitably in parenting negatively affects women across cultures—and how social safety nets can either intensify or offset these negative effects.  The political role of motherhood, and how a culture of mother blame can destroy an entire society.  The rampant violence of life in the United States.  The long-term effects of parental leave on parent-child relationships.  You can find Abigail’s book, a reading list, and all books I recommend on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. About Abigail LeonardAbigail Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and the author of Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries. It follows women in Japan, Kenya, Finland and the US during their first year as mothers, and was named an Amazon “Best nonfiction book of the year so far”, and a Sunday Times “Book of the week”. Abigail was previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR and New York Times video... and where she had her own three children.Visit her website here, or find her on Instagram @AbigailLeonardAuthor.