Inflection Point with Lauren Schiller

Latest Episodes:

A Good Day to SHARE: Emily Ladau on how to break down barriers Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

Today, we hear from Emily Ladau, a disability rights activist, about how to break down barriers. Emily Ladau has Larsen syndrome, a rare genetic joint and muscle disorder. She is on a mission to make progress for disability rights by sharing her own story and helping others do the same on their own terms. She's won a number of awards for her activism, and her first book is Demystifying Disability:What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally.

This is episode 5 from a special segment for Women’s History Month about how we can build a more feminist future....and take care of ourselves and each other when the work is daunting. Find more trailblazers in our new book, It’s a Good Day to Change the World.

A Good Day to TRANSFORM: Senator Sarah McBride on how to advance equality Mar 21, 2023

Show notes

This episode we hear from Senator Sarah McBride about how to advance equality.

Senator McBride became the highest-ranking openly trans official in the country in 2020 when she was elected to the Delaware state senate. But this wasn’t the first time she made history.

In 2009, McBride was a junior at American University when she used her social media platform to come out as a trans woman. She says coming out was the most difficult thing she'd ever done and realized she wanted to play a larger role in creating an accepting world for more trans people. So, while still in college, she led the way in advocating for the adoption of Delaware’s first gender identity non-discrimination bill.

This is episode 4 from a special segment for Women’s History Month about how we can build a more feminist future....and take care of ourselves and each other when the work is daunting. Find more trailblazers in our new book, It’s a Good Day to Change the World.

A Good Day to CREATE: Gloria Steinem on how to start a revolution Mar 14, 2023

Show notes

Today, we hear from Gloria Steinem about how to start a revolution. Through her speeches, books, documentary films, and the feminist organizations she’s founded, Gloria advocates for reproductive choice and ending violence against women and children. She cofounded the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the Women’s Media Center,among others. She was one of the founders of New York magazine and in 1972 she launched Ms., the first feminist magazine with national distribution.

This is episode 3 from a special segment for Women’s History Month about how we can build a more feminist future....and take care of ourselves and each other when the work is daunting. Find more trailblazers in our new book, It’s a Good Day to Change the World.

A Good Day to PREPARE: Caroline Paul on training to be brave Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

Today, we hear from Caroline Paul about the importance of being brave. Caroline should know…She's climbed the Golden Gate Bridge, gotten into Guinness World Records for crawling and trained for the Olympic luge team. In 1989, Caroline was one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco—1 of 15 women out of a crew of 1,500. For thirteen years, every day on the job was an adventure. She published a memoir about her experience, and later wrote The Gutsy Girl and You Are Mighty, a practical guide for young activists.

This is episode 2 from a special segment for Women’s History Month about how we can build a more feminist future....and take care of ourselves and each other when the work is daunting. Find more trailblazers in our new book, It’s a Good Day to Change the World.

A Good Day to IMAGINE: Isha Clarke on how to believe in your power Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

Isha Clarke is a founding member of Youth vs. Apocalypse, an activist organization that organized the first-ever youth climate strike in San Francisco. Isha has been fighting for climate justice since junior high school. That's when they spoke out against a coal terminal slated to be built in their hometown of Oakland, CA. A few years later they confronted senator Dianne Feinstein about the Green New Deal in a video that went viral.
Isha believes we all have the power to reverse the climate crisis.

This is episode 1 from a special segment for Women’s History Month about how we can build a more feminist future....and take care of ourselves and each other when the work is daunting. Find more trailblazers in our new book, It’s a Good Day to Change the World.

It's a Good Day to Change the World - Introducing a new book and miniseries Feb 23, 2023

Show notes

Great news! We have a new book coming out based on Inflection Point interviews, called It’s a Good Day to Change the World! To give you a peek inside every Tuesday, throughout Women’s History Month, we’re bringing you a special short segment we produced with KALW San Francisco about how we can build a more feminist future–and take care of ourselves and each other along the way. You’ll hear inspiring firsthand stories and get practical tools from trailblazers for how to create an equal, just and joyful world. First episode airs on February 28th.

Lauren Schiller and co-author Hadley Dynak will be at bookstores around the Bay Area and in Park City, NYC and Milwaukee throughout March. Learn more, find an event near you, and get the book at itsagooddaybook.com.

Thank you to our Bay Area launch sponsors:

Donkey & Goat Winery - A woman made winery and Berkeley, CA’s first natural winery

Hello!Lucky

Almanac Beer

Slanted Door

"So You Want To Talk About Race" author, Ijeoma Oluo Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

An awkward conversation with her white mother about “good white people” inspired Ijeoma Oluo to take on the unenviable task of writing one of the most user-friendly books on race of our time: “So You Want To Talk About Race.” In plain language, Ijeoma has confronted deeply uncomfortable questions surrounding racial injustice from the school-to-prison pipeline to the Black Lives Matter movement to white feminism and intersectionality.

In our conversation recorded in 2018, Ijeoma wakes me up to the fact that solidarity between all women cannot happen until white cis women hold themselves accountable to the ways they have benefitted from systems of oppression. Most importantly, Ijeoma offers practical, everyday actions that you can do today to help dismantle the system of racism.

Feminist Detective: The Case of Body Positivity - with Ruth Whippman Jul 08, 2020

Show notes

Is the body positivity movement a good thing or a bad thing in the quest for equality? Ruth Whippman joins Lauren to uncover the debate.

Support our production with a monthly or one-time donation.

And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions.

A Conversation To Do the Dishes By - Eve Rodsky, author of "Fair Play" returns! May 20, 2020

Show notes

Could the Covid-19 pandemic be the inflection point that marks the end of the gendered division of labor at home? Now that we are all tethered to our homes, you may be doing more laundry,
dishes, cooking, cleaning (did I say dishes?), nose wiping, bottom wiping and emotionally tending to your kids and teens. So it seems super timely for us to talk to the woman who has emerged as a leader in the movement to end the gendered division of labor at home and how to divvy up that labor as equitably as possible.

Eve Rodsky has spent almost a decade surveying women and men about who does what at home to understand how and why we divide up labor along gender lines--and how to shift it--she’s talked with Economists, Psychologists, Historians, Neurologists and more.

And she wrote a book that details exactly how to divide and conquer with your partner, the unending duties at home. It’s called "Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution For When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life
to Live)".

If you’ve been listening to Inflection Point, you may have also caught my conversation with Eve at INFORUM last year. I wanted to hear how her system is working in the Covid-19 world.

We spoke live (on Zoom, of course) for The Battery in San Francisco about how to make changes that are a win for everyone in your home and in society.

How To Get Through The Worst, Together--Dr Kelsey Crowe Apr 29, 2020

Show notes

I think we can all agree, it’s been a rough spring with COVID-19 taking over our lives. You may know someone who’s sick, or who’s lost a loved one or their livelihood, or any number of awful things. But as this all goes down, we don’t always know what to say, or do, for someone who’s hurting, let alone asking for the help we might need ourselves. My guest Kelsey Crowe wrote a book, “There is No Good Card For This. What to Say and Do When Life is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to the People You Love” and founded a whole community called Help Each Other Out, to help us help each other. We spoke in 2017 and I thought we could all use a bit of what she calls “whiskey for the wounded.”

Support our production with a monthly or one-time contribution!

And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions.