The Feminist Present

Episode 54: Alexis Pauline Gumbs and The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde Sep 04, 2024

This week, we have the incredible Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the show. Her newest work Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde is a biography that offers a new understanding of the life and work of Audre Lorde. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives and this work illuminates a new perspective on the enduring impact of Lorde and her work.

Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist. She is a poet, writer, scholar and activist based in Durham, North Carolina. Her writings have appeared in key movement periodicals like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Abolitionist, Ms. Magazine, and the collections Pleasure Activism, Abolition Now, The Revolution Starts at Home, Dear Sister and the Transformative Justice Reader.

Episode 53: Samhita Mukhopadhyay & What Comes After the Death of the Girlboss? Aug 28, 2024

Join Laura for a discussion with Samhita Mukhopadhyay exploring her newest book, The Myth of Making It. The former executive editor of Teen Vogue brings to this conversation her experiences of workplace reckoning to help us reimagine what work can be when we are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture.

Samhita Mukhopadhyay is is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and Feministing and the current editorial director at the Meteor. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Atlantic,and The Nation.

Episode 52 - Vanessa Angélica Villarreal Jul 24, 2024

Join Laura and Adrian as they talk with Vanessa Angélica Villarreal about her newest book, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders. In this conversation, the crew discusses topics like the queered pop culture icons of the 90's, exploring gender expression as a racialized teenager, and the work of remembering after erasure.

Come join Vanessa Angélica Villarreal and our very own Laura Goode for an event on August 7th, 7:00pm at 9th Ave Green Apple Books!

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a is a poet, essayist, and first-generation Mexican immigrant born in the Rio Grande Valley and raised in Houston, Texas. An accoladed writer, Vanessa is a recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Episode 49 - Lyz Lenz RETURNS! Feb 21, 2024

Author and self-described "soccer mom Simone de Beauvoir" Lyz Lenz makes a triumphant return to the pod to discuss her new book THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE with Laura and Adrian. (Please refer to TFP Episode 7 from December 2020 for Lyz's first mid-derecho podcast appearance!) Her third book in five years, THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE brings Lenz's characteristic blend of incisive sociological research and searing personal commentary to a highly relevant post-pandemic issue: divorce. Discussion topics include how Laura and Lyz just missed each other in the early-2000s Twin Cities, why the movie Fargo is the Beetlejuice of the Midwest, and what we really talk about when we talk about women and divorce.

Episode 48 - Nicole Chung Nov 30, 2023

After a stunning revelation about a life-changing moment THE Dr. Roxane Gay offered Laura, Adrian and Laura join acclaimed memoirist Nicole Chung to discuss her second book, A Living Remedy. Following the contours of A Living Remedy, this discussion travels through the national tragedy of American healthcare, what an elite education and successful writing career can and can't do for class mobility, and much more.

Episode 47 - Lydia Kiesling Sep 14, 2023

Laura interviews novelist Lydia Kiesling about her second novel Mobility. Related discussion topics also include the astrology of The Sopranos (Laura and Lydia are both Christopher suns, Mobility's protagonist Bunny Glenn is more of a Meadow rising), the '90s in girlhood, the time Lydia joined a panel Laura organized at Stanford with a newborn on her chest, how mothers write whole books in stolen moments, and what we really talk about when we talk about girlbosses in the oil and gas industry.

Episode 44 - A Guestless Catch-up-isode Spectacular Jun 30, 2023

After a few months of absence, your trusty co-hosts return to tell you about new projects, new episodes, and new friends of the pod! Live from cyberspace, it's ... a guestless update spectacular!

Episode 43 - Brown and Gay in LA with Anthony C. Ocampo Nov 09, 2022

Join us for the glorious return of friend of the pod Dr. Anthony C. Ocampo as we talk about his fantastic new book Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons.

Anthony Christian Ocampo, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author of Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons and The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race, which has been featured on NPR, NBC News, Literary Hub, and in the Los Angeles Times. He is an Academic Director of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity and the co-host of the podcast Professor-ing. His writing has appeared in GQ, Catapult, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Review of Books, Colorlines, Gravy, Life & Thyme, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Raised in Northeast Los Angeles, he earned his BA in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and MA in modern thought and literature from Stanford University and his MA and PhD in sociology from UCLA.

Episode 42 - Global Gender Panic with Judith Butler Oct 19, 2022

Judith Butler joins Laura and Adrian for the final episode in our series on moral panic. Judith Butler is a renowned philosopher and gender theorist, and the author of numerous books including Gender TroubleandBodies That Matter. Their first non-academic press book, Who's Afraid of Gender?, is forthcoming from FSG in 2023. Their piece in The Guardian mentioned in the episode can be found here. They currently serve as the the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Episode 41 - Melissa Gira Grant Oct 12, 2022

Join Laura and Adrian as they talk to journalist and author Melissa Gira Grant in the latest installment of our series on the trans moral panic. Melissa is a staff writer at The New Republic (her articles mentioned in the episode include "'Libs of Tiktok' and the Right's Embrace of Anti-LGBTQ Violence" and "A Pizzagate in Every City"); the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Verso); and the co-director of They Won't Call It Murder. She has reported on violence against massage workers in Flushing; attacks on trans rights across Texas; resistance to police killings in Columbus, and the global movement for sex workers' rights. Her forthcoming book is titled A Woman Is Against the Law: Sex, Race, and the Limits of Justice of America(Little, Brown and Company).

Episode 40 - Your Fave is Problematic with Liat Kaplan Oct 05, 2022

Laura and Adrian are joined by Liat Kaplan, who in the early 2010s as a teenager started the popular Tumblr page "Your Fave is Problematic." She stayed anonymous as its founder until last year, but the blog has been often cited in the meantime as one of the origin points of cancel culture as we know it today. Liat discusses its intentions, impact, and, for the first time, the full personal history that led her to start the blog originally.

Episode 39 - Trans Lives, Trans Kids, Trans Panic with Jules Gill-Peterson Aug 31, 2022

Join us as we continue mythbusting through moral panics with our fantastic guest Jules Gill-Peterson. Adrian, Laura, and Jules discuss how cancel culture has its roots deep in transphobia and the misinformation surrounding the moral panic about transgender kids.

Jules Gill-Peterson is Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Jules is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), the first book to shatter the widespread myth that transgender children are a brand new generation in the twenty-first century. Jules has been published widely - you can read a recent New Republic piece of hers here and subscribe to her wonderful newsletter, Sad Brown Girl, here.

Episode 38 - Moral Panic Mythbusting with Michael Hobbes (Part 2) Aug 24, 2022

Join Adrian and friend of the pod Michael Hobbes for the second half of their conversation on Moral Panic Mythbusting.

Michael Hobbes is a journalist and co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase. He previously was a reporter at The Huffington Post and co-host of the podcast You're Wrong About.

Episode 37 - Moral Panic Mythbusting with Michael Hobbes (Part 1) Aug 17, 2022

Join Adrian and friend of the pod Michael Hobbes in part one of Moral Panic Mythbusting.

Michael Hobbes is a journalist and co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase. He previously was a reporter at The Huffington Post and co-host of the podcast You're Wrong About.

Episode 36 - Vauhini Vara Jun 29, 2022

Vauhini Vara joins TFP to discuss her debut novel The Immortal King Rao. Vauhini was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, and grew up there and in Oklahoma and the Seattle suburbs. She reported at The Wall Street Journal for nine years, with writing also appearing in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Wired, The New Republic, Businessweek, Fortune, and elsewhere.

Episode 35 - Angela Garbes May 04, 2022

Angela Garbes is the author of Like a Mother, an NPR Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, New York, Bon Appétit, and featured on NPR's Fresh Air. On this week's episode, she and Laura laugh and cry as they discuss her new book Essential Labor, which explores care work and mothering as social change.

Episode 34 - Nell McShane Wulfhart Apr 27, 2022

Nell McShane Wulfhart is a frequent contributor to the New York Times travel section and wrote the column “Carry On” from 2016-2019. She has written for Travel + Leisure, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and T Magazine. She is the author of the Audible Original Off Menu. She joins Laura to discuss her new book "The Great Stewardess Rebellion" and the untold feminist history behind flight attendants in America.

Episode 33 - Ry Russo-Young Apr 13, 2022

Ry Russo-Young is an award-winning film director whose work includes the movies Before I Fall and The Sun is Also a Star. Ry joins us this week as we discuss her newest work, the three-part HBO docuseries Nuclear Family, which investigates the prolonged impact on Ry’s family of the four-year legal battle between her lesbian mothers and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights. We talk about everything from the craft complexities of telling your family's story to the importance of honoring our queer elders.

Episode 32 - Melissa Febos Mar 16, 2022

Melissa Febos is the critically acclaimed author of Whipsmart, Abandon Me, and Girlhood. She joins Laura and Adrian for a candid and captivating conversation on her newest book Body Work (out 3/16). They explore the craft and complexity of writing truthfully about our lives and loved ones.

Episode 31 - Taylor Harris Mar 02, 2022

Taylor Harris is the author of the affecting memoir This Boy We Made, which details her family’s journey through the American medical system in search of a diagnosis and treatment for her son Tophs. In this discussion, we explore the function of faith, anxiety, parenthood, medical mysteries, and institutional racism. Harris’s essays have appeared in TIME, Catapult, The Washington Post, and many other publications. She teaches writing at Penn State University.

Episode 30 - Alex Marzano-Lesnevich Feb 23, 2022

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is the author of the award-winning book The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir. Alex joins TFP this week to discuss the historically controversial lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness: is it really a lesbian novel, or perhaps more of a trans novel? Have we moved beyond the tragic queer love story? And how has our interpretation of this classic text changed in the last 100 years?

Episode 29 - Moira Donegan on The Feminine Mystique Jan 26, 2022

Friend of the podcast Moira Donegan is an opinion columnist for Guardian US who longtime TFP fans will remember from our first season. Moira makes a glorious return to discuss her recent deep dive into Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

Episode 28 - Jeanette Winterson Oct 27, 2021

Jeanette Winterson CBE is the author of 27 influential feminist texts, including Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Sexing The Cherry, Gut Symmetries, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?, and most recently, 12 BYTES: Where We Might Go Next. In a special event partnering with the independent bookstores Politics & Prose and Books & Books, Jeanette joined Laura and Adrian to talk about how 12 BYTES engages feminist history in its probing consideration of artificial intelligence.

Episode 27 - Sarah Marshall + Alex Steed Jul 14, 2021

Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed are the hosts of the podcast YOU ARE GOOD (formerly WHY ARE DADS), the film podcast unafraid of feelings. With Laura and Adrian, they dive into the odd complexity of REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, the 1990 film adapted from law professor Alan Dershowitz’s 1985 book.

Episode 26 - Meera Menon Jun 30, 2021

Meera Menon is the director of two feature films: EQUITY (2016), starring Anna Gunn as a high-powered Wall Street broker, and FARAH GOES BANG (2013), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the inaugural Nora Ephron Prize from Tribeca and Vogue (and which Meera co-wrote with one of your loyal hosts). She’s also a sought-after director in episodic television, with directing credits on Dirty John, You, The Walking Dead, The Man in High Castle, Queen of the South, Halt and Catch Fire, Snowfall, and the upcoming Ms. Marvel. Adrian and Laura made a trip down memory lane to revisit the iconic NOW AND THEN (1995) with Meera, which helped to inspire FARAH GOES BANG.

Episode 25 - Merve Emre Jun 23, 2021

Merve Emre is associate professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America 2017), The Ferrante Letters (2019), and The Personality Brokers (2018). She is the editor of Once and Future Feminist (2018), The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway (2021), and The Norton Modern Library Mrs. Dalloway (2021). Merve chatted with Adrian and Laura about the troubled masterwork that is BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992).

Episode 24 - Terry Castle Jun 16, 2021

The wildly talented Terry Castle, Walter A. Hass Professor in the Humanities, has taught literature at Stanford for almost 40 years. She was once described by Susan Sontag as “the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today”, and detailed her friendship with Sontag in the classic essay “Desperately Seeking Susan.” Her many books include The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology From Ariosto to Stonewall and The Professor and Other Writings. Laura and Adrian splashed around in Terry’s deep well of Patricia Highsmith knowledge for this rousing discussion of class, race, and the queer gaze in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999).

Episode 23 - Annalee Newitz Jun 09, 2021

Annalee Newitz is pretty much nerd royalty. They are the author of the novels The Future of Another Timeline and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. As a science journalist, their work appears regularly in the New York Times and New Scientist, as well as in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. They co-host the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, founded io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo. Annalee joined Adrian and Laura to dish about their most recent book, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age: how its archaeological interpretations hearken back to their Ph.D work in literature, what lessons present cities might learn from ancient ones, and their “polyamorous” approach to working on multiple projects simultaneously.

Episode 22 - Inkoo Kang Jun 02, 2021

Inkoo Kang, recently announced as the Washington Post’s newest TV critic, was also named the best critic of 2021 by the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards for her work at The Hollywood Reporter. Inkoo co-hosts the All About Almodovar podcast, and has previously written about film, TV, and culture for Slate, MTV News, Los Angeles Times, Atlantic, and many other places. Laura and Adrian had a blast watching and discussing the 2013 Swedish teen film WE ARE THE BEST! with Inkoo, veering into productive detours about benign neglect in parenting, canonical hairstyle changes, what we binge-watched as nerdy teens, and much more.

Episode 21 - Susan Stryker May 26, 2021

Susan Stryker is an author, professor, filmmaker, and heroine of the trans and queer rights movement. Her extensive bibliography includes two editions of The Transgender Studies Reader and Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area; her documentary films include Christine in the Cutting Room, an experimental short film about Christine Jorgensen, and most recently, The Lady and the Dale, released in early 2021 by HBO. Adrian and Laura talked to Susan about performances of gender in the triumph of cinema that is MISS CONGENIALITY (2000), focusing on its constructions of drag, queer fictive kinship, the metrosexual of the 90s-00s, and the beauty-industrial complex. Also, Laura makes a shocking confession about a secret from her past.

Episode 20 - DiRetrospective Pt. 2 May 19, 2021

Laura and Adrian joyfully reunite in part 2 of this guestless double-wide kickoff to The Feminist Present’s third season. And we have a new, cinematic theme! In addition to the book nerd chatter you’ve come to count on from us in the present, for this season we’re also reflecting on the past: we’ve invited a bunch of brilliant feminists to talk about ‘90s-’00s “chick flicks” with us, allowing them to define that term however they wish. We begin here with a crucial two-part deep dive into the era’s complex representations of gender: a retrospective of Leonardo DiCaprio’s iconic and iconoclastic career from 1993-1997. We journey through the eight films DiCaprio made during this groundshifting period: in part 1 we discuss This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries, The Quick and The Dead, and in part 2 we cover Total Eclipse, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and finally, of course, Titanic.

Episode 19 - DiRetrospective Pt. 1 May 12, 2021

Laura and Adrian joyfully reunite in this guestless double-wide kickoff to The Feminist Present’s third season. And we have a new, cinematic theme! In addition to the book nerd chatter you’ve come to count on from us in the present, for this season we’re also reflecting on the past: we’ve invited a bunch of brilliant feminists to talk about ‘90s-’00s “chick flicks” with us, allowing them to define that term however they wish. We begin here with a crucial two-part deep dive into the era’s complex representations of gender: a retrospective of Leonardo DiCaprio’s iconic and iconoclastic career from 1993-1997. We journey through the eight films DiCaprio made during this groundshifting period: in part 1 we discuss This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries, The Quick and The Dead, and in part 2 we cover Total Eclipse, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and finally, of course, Titanic.

Episode 18 - Cheryl Strayed Dec 09, 2020

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, and the novel Torch. She’s also Laura’s favorite living author. Laura barely kept her shit together talking with Cheryl about unconditional positive regard as a feminist value, the writer as teacher, and how breadwinners can’t afford to have writers’ block.

Episode 17 - Lyz Lenz Dec 02, 2020

Lyz Lenz is the author of two books, the latter of which, Belabored: A Vindication on the Rights of Pregnant Women, was released while she was fleeing an Iowa derecho mid-pandemic with her two young children. She was, until very recently, a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette; her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, and in her popular newsletter, “Men Yell at Me.” Lyz talked to Adrian and Laura about releasing Belabored amidst multiple disasters, the hardcore survival instincts of Midwestern women, and becoming a writer on the internet.

Episode 16 - Sister Roma Nov 25, 2020

Sister Roma, the “most photographed nun in the world,”has been an influential member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence since 1987. The Sisters are an Order of queer and trans nuns that debuted in San Francisco on Easter Sunday 1979; originally formed to draw money and attention to the AIDS crisis, the Sisters have spent over four decades in radically compassionate service to, in their words, “those on the edges.” Laura and Adrian got super emotional talking to Roma about the political value of drag, how the COVID-19 pandemic recalls that of HIV/AIDS, the Sisters’ tireless support for feminist causes, and real-life Sister encounters in San Francisco.

Episode 15 - Nick Mitchell Nov 18, 2020

Nick Mitchell is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received, and returned, UCSC’s Chancellor’s Award for Diversity in early 2020, and has been a vocal proponent of the Cops Off Campus movement throughout and beyond the University of California system. Adrian and Laura talked to Nick about his essay “Summertime Selves” and about the intersectional layers of Nick and Laura’s shared, gossip-rich history as students working in the service industry.

TFP Election Special - Farai Chideya Nov 06, 2020

Farai Chideya has covered every American presidential election since 1996. She’s the author of six books, as well as a journalist and commentator whose work has been featured on NPR, CNN, ABC News, Newsweek, FiveThirtyEight, Oxygen, and many other outlets. After the 2016 election, she became a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, blending quantitative and qualitative research on race and gender diversity in the media. Laura and Adrian talked to Farai about America’s nail-biter of a presidential election during the profound uncertainty of November 5, 2020.

Episode 14 - Imran Siddiquee Oct 28, 2020

Imran Siddiquee is a filmmaker, writer and activist, whose articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Bitch and Salon. They are also an active filmmaker and organize the BlackStar Film Festival. Laura and Adrian talk with Imran about masculinity, pop culture, and race, about being from a place called Springfield and about the complexities of white feminism.

Episode 13 - Katie Hill Oct 21, 2020

Katie Hill represented California’s 25th district in Congress from January to November 2019, making her its first openly bisexual member. She’s also had a hell of a year. Hill resigned after leaked photos emerged that revealed her relationship with a female campaign staffer; Hill alleges these photos were leaked to right-wing media by her abusive ex-husband. Laura and Adrian talked to Katie about queer reimagining of feminist history, the inaccuracy of the term “revenge porn”, and her new memoir, She Will Rise.

Episode 12 - Sarah Smarsh Oct 14, 2020

Sarah Smarsh is a journalist based in Kansas. Her first book was Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (2018), was a National Book Award finalist. Her new book, She Come By It Natural, deftly combines a biography of the indomitable, vexing figure of Dolly Parton with a family memoir and a story of coming of age as a feminist. Laura and Adrian talk to Sarah about feminism, commodification and the way Parton's body has been read and received. They talk about Hollywood and Pigeon Forge, about country music and growing up in the 1980s.

Episode 11 - Morgan Jerkins Oct 07, 2020

Morgan Jerkins is an author, editor and essayist. Her first book, the essay collection This Will Be My Undoing, was published in 2018 and became a New York Times bestseller. Her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands, is a travelogue and a family memoir about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to points north and west. Laura and Adrian talk to Morgan about memory and family, about travel and race, and about the responsibilities of the essayist and the reporter to their subjects.

Departmentalize Now!: TFP Clayman Conversations Sep 23, 2020

Since 1968, Black Studies departments have been established across the country, contributing to the intellectual life of the university and informing larger conversations about race beyond the academy. However, departmentalization eludes many universities, including Stanford. In this Clayman Conversations event, our panelists Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Kimberly Thomas McNair, Aileen K. Robinson, and Fabio Rojas, will discuss how departmentalization is both a political and feminist issue, and how the university legitimates certain knowledge through departmentalization. Additionally, our panelists will consider the symbiotic relationship between social movement participants and institutions of higher education.

The TERF Industrial Complex: TFP Clayman Conversations Sep 09, 2020

The figure of the “TERF” (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) has emerged as one of the more puzzling flashpoints in recent culture wars on campus and in the media. Why have trans lives and identities become a politically potent rallying cry for people who seem not to care very much for trans people? In this conversation with scholars Marquis Bey, Grace Lavery, and Jules Gill-Peterson, we explore the outsize influence TERFs wield in the media, what their influence means for feminism, and why their position occupies a unique and troubling place in the current discourse around free speech and “cancel culture.”"

Debate Me!: TFP Clayman Conversations Aug 26, 2020

Write anything, post anything as a woman on the internet, and they will gather: the Debate Me Bros. They are owed more arguments, further justification. They are experts, and they aren’t sure you are. In the first of our Clayman Conversations Online, journalist Nhi Le and scholar Moira Weigel will discuss online debate culture from a feminist perspective. Is the demand for free and open debate online really as neutral as it often presents itself? How are dominant power structures replicated or challenged in online debate culture? As with all Clayman Conversations, the panelists will consider dimensions of race, class, gender and sexuality in untangling this timely issue.

Laura and Adrian Unplugged: TFP Guestless Special #1 Aug 19, 2020

In this special Season 1 finale, Laura and Adrian reflect on post-#MeToo realizations, teen feminist lightbulb moments, queer respectability politics, and much, much more. Featuring references to WAP, Ben Shapiro's beleaguered wife, and Hegel all in the same five minutes. Listen to the end for tantalizing hints about our upcoming Clayman Conversations and Season 2 guests!

Episode 10 - Rebecca Traister Aug 12, 2020

Rebecca Traister is an author and columnist, who is currently writer-at-large at New York Magazine. Her books, including All the Single Ladies (2016) and Good and Mad (2018) have become touchstones in contemporary political discourse around gender, sexuality and the long backlash. Laura and Adrian talk to Rebecca Traister about anger and its uses, about family and intergenerational fellowship in plague times, and about what it takes to stay mad, generation to generation.

Episode 9 - Young Jean Lee Aug 05, 2020

Young Jean Lee is a playwright, director and filmmaker, as well an Associate Professor in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford. Her plays include The Shipment (2009), Untitled Feminist Show (2011), and Straight White Men (2014). In 2012, Charles Isherwood called her "hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation." Laura and Adrian talk to Young Jean Lee about that sense of adventure: what it takes to scare yourself, what feminist theater looks like today, and the role of hope and pleasure in performance even in dark times.

Episode 8 - Grace Parra Jul 29, 2020

Grace Parra is a screenwriter and actress whose performing credits include The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, Superstore, Master of None, and White Guy Talk Show. Until very recently, she was writing for a CBS series called Broke, and she also co-hosts the podcast Hysteria. Grace talks to Laura and Adrian about Hollywood, success and its many opposites, being grateful for missed opportunities, and how race and gender inflect them.

Episode 7 - Anthony C. Ocampo Jul 22, 2020

Anthony Christian Ocampo is a scholar and writer who focuses on race, immigration, and LGBTQ issues. He is a sociology professor at Cal Poly Pomona and a Ford Foundation Fellow. His groundbreaking book, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino-Americans Break the Rules of Race, was called “essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity” by José Antonio Vargas. Laura and Adrian talk to Anthony about Filipinx identities, about racialization, about queerness in the academy, and about how one studies the ways in which race and gender are perceived and experienced.

Episode 6 - Sarah Marshall + Michael Hobbes of You're Wrong About Jul 15, 2020

Sarah Marshall is a writer currently at work on a book about the satanic panic of the 1980s. Michael Hobbes is a journalist at the Huffington Post. Since 2018, Sarah and Michael have been hosting "You're Wrong About," a podcast about true crime, moral panics, and the untruths or half-truths around crime, fame, and power that have dominated American culture and national politics over the past half century. Laura and Adrian speak with Sarah and Michael about their podcast, about taxonomies of wrongness, and about the myths by which the true crime genre has governed the way gender is experienced and politicized in the United States.

Episode 5 - Moira Donegan Jul 08, 2020

Moira Donegan is an opinion columnist for Guardian US whose work has also appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, the New Republic, and in the viral The Cut essay, “I Started The Media Men List," in which she describes her creation of (and the fallout from) the "Shitty Media Men" list that outed sexual harassers in media and journalism. Laura and Adrian talk to Moira about Jane Fonda's classic workout tapes, exercising at home, about what our new domesticity does to the male gaze, the institution of the gym and why one should mourn it, and whether there is a way to disentangle self-improvement from capitalism. [Trigger warning: some discussion of disordered eating.]

Episode 4 - Danny M. Lavery Jul 01, 2020

In addition to his advice-giving role as Slate’s Dear Prudence, Danny M. Lavery is a co-founder of the Toast and the author of Texts From Jane Eyre, The Merry Spinster, and Something That May Shock and Discredit You. Danny talks to Laura and Adrian about giving advice, about respect and respectability, and above all about biological and chosen families. [NOTE: This episode contains material that may be disturbing to some listeners.]

Episode 3 - Jia Tolentino Jun 24, 2020

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker whose recent work includes an exploration of youth vaping and essays on the ongoing cultural reckoning about sexual assault. Previously, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. Her criticism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Grantland, the Awl, Pitchfork, The Fader, Time, and Slate. Her first book, the essay collection Trick Mirror, was published in 2019. Laura and Adrian talk to Jia about eating and cooking during a pandemic, about food as a means to create and project self-image, and about what it means to be "lucky" in the age of COVID.

Episode 2 - Tressie McMillan Cottom Jun 17, 2020

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic and writer whose work has been recognized nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race and gender. McMillan Cottom’s columns have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Dissent Magazine. She is also the author or co-editor of four books. Her most recent book, THICK: and Other Essays, is a critically acclaimed best-seller that situates Black women’s intellectual tradition at its center. Laura and Adrian speak to Tressie about the protests that engulfed the United States following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, about writing and thinking on the fly in unsettled times, and about why it all feels different this time.

Episode 1 - Evette Dionne Jun 11, 2020

In our inaugural episode, we are proud to welcome Evette Dionne to discuss her new book about Black women's fight for equality and suffrage, Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box. Known across the internet as “free Black girl,” Dionne is a Black feminist culture writer, editor, and scholar: she’s the editor-in-chief of B*tch Media and the author of another 2020 book, Fat Girls Deserve Fairytales Too: Living Hopefully On the Other Side of Skinny. Laura and Adrian speak to Evette about black women and the battle for the ballot box, about writing and teaching erased chapters of history, and what equitable coalition building could look like now.

Episode 51: Sarah Manguso & the Liars marriage makes Jul 17, 2024

Sarah Manguso joins Laura to talk about her newest book, Liars. Telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, Liars depicts the slow and normalized forms of abuse and misogyny baked into marriage. Pre-order liars now, for release on July 23rd.

Sarah Manguso's book tour comes to San Francisco on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 7:00pm @ The Booksmith! Details and RSVP here.

Sarah Manguso is a poet and author of nine books. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine. Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her writing has been translated into twelve languages.

Episode 50 - Jessica Calarco: Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Jun 05, 2024

Jessica Calarco joins Laura and Adrian to unpack her newly released book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net. They discuss the histories and the sociological interviews central to Calarco's book, painting a picture of the women who are tasked with holding society together with their labor.

Dr. Jessica Calarco is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on education, families, and health decision-making. Her award-winning research reveals how structures power and privilege maintain socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender inequalities in these settings. She is the author of Negotiating Opportunities, A Field Guide to Grad School, and most recently Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net.

Episode 46 - Aliens Aug 29, 2023

Laura and Adrian embark on their new series: feminism and the horror genre. We dedicate the first episode of this series to two favorites of ours: Hollywood treasure Sigourney Weaver and slimy aliens with acid for blood. A discussion of 1986’s Aliens, horror and motherhood, and dueling queens.

Episode 45 - Deadloch with Moira Donegan Aug 15, 2023

This episode is basically a PSA: if you’re not watching the Australian feminist crime show Deadloch, then Laura, Adrian and guest Moira Donegan have one question for you: why not? Depressed industrial towns, toxic masculinity, lesbians, a four-hour movie called ‘Poseidon’s Uterus’: this show has everything, and we’re here for all of it.

In Bed With The Right: Midge Decter with Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell Jul 10, 2023

Midge Decter (1927-2022) has often been called the "grandmother of neoconservatism" -- hers was in some ways a pretty classic trajectory, from New Deal liberalism to profound unease with the social movements of the 1960s, to the center of the conservative movement and Republican politics. But unlike most of her fellow neocons, Midge Decter always framed her trajectory quite openly in terms of gender: repulsion from a certain kind of women's liberation, and attraction to a certain kind of masculinity. In this episode, Moira and Adrian delve into the weird, cantankerous world of Midge Decter with the co-hosts of Know Your Enemy, Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.

In Bed With The Right: Gay Marriage with Moira and Adrian Jul 10, 2023

Join us for the first episode of the all-new show In Bed With The Right. For their inaugural episode, Moira and Adrian delve into right-wing (ahem) contributions to the gay marriage debate. Ten years ago the Supreme Court decided Windsor v. US and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which together spelled the beginning of the end of the gay marriage debate (gay marriage would be established nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges two years later). But did the issue really go away? How did the terms of the debate back then on the right influence today's moral panics, how do they motivate a far-right Supreme Court? Follow the show to hear more!

In Bed With The Right - Trailer Jul 07, 2023

Get a sneak peek at the upcoming, all-new show In Bed With the Right hosted by Moira Donegan and TFP's very own Adrian Daub.

Trailer - Get a Sneak Peek Jun 07, 2020

Listen for a first look of what is to come this season on The Feminist Present. First full episode will be released on June 10th.

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