The Feminist Present

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. 

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 Trouble and Bodies 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.