Inflection Point with Lauren Schiller

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this Toolkit, learn how you can change systems that create climate change.

Meet the woman who helped develop The Green New Deal--and how you can make a difference in the climate crisis. Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the former policy director for New Consensus and Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign. She warns that without a shift in our policies and systems, we could become a nation of "fortresses" and "sacrifice zones". We’ll hear where she came from and how can the way she thinks about solving problems, can solve the biggest crisis of our time. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, Gunn-Wright has also worked as the policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, was a Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and served on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2011 with majors in African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. 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.

Learn what you can do right now to make a difference on climate and energy. Heather was the first African-American, first female and youngest mayor of Greenville, MS and is now field director for Moms Clean Air Force. Special thanks to our friends at Bioneers, producers of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature podcast, for production assistance. 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.

Meet Heather McTeer Toney, the National Field Director at Moms Clean Air Force, which fights for climate safety to protect our children's health. She shares how her two terms as the first African-American, first female and youngest mayor of Greenville, MS helps her be an even more effective activist, and what one thing motivates people to make big changes. Special thanks to our friends at Bioneers, producers of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature podcast, for production assistance. 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.

Isha Clark is a high school senior and a youth organizer with Youth vs. Apocalypse, a Bay Area youth climate justice organization. In this toolkit we learn three actions we can take right now to reverse the climate crisis and... how to put pressure on a power holder. Special thanks to our friends at Bioneers, producers of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature podcast, for production assistance. 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.

Isha Clarke is an activist with Youth vs Apocalypse. You may know her from a viral video where she asked California Senator Dianne Feinstein to move the Green New Deal forward; she helped organize the youth Climate Strike in San Francisco that attracted 30,000 students, during the international "week of action" when Greta Thurnberg sailed to America. She is a high school student working every day to reverse the climate crisis because as she says..." we have this power and responsibility to make this radical change. And I hope that everyone listening will get involved and know that they have the power to do something." Special thanks to our friends at Bioneers, producers of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature podcast, for production assistance. 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.

In this episode we’ll hear how Amber Tamblyn went from being an actress to being an activist--defining her own role in the feminist movement--and how we can all play a role in leading change.  Amber's  book is called "Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution." It's part memoir, part manifesto, part call to action. We sat down together in San Francisco while she was in town as part of the release of her book in paperback. Back in 2017, Amber wrote an OpEd for the NYTimes, called "I'm Done With Not Being Believed" in which she tells what happened when a well-known actor almost as old as her dad tried to pick her up when she was 16, and then called her a liar when she outed him on Twitter. This was before the Weinstein revelations, before the #MeToo movement caught fire and before Times Up, which Amber went on to co-found. 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.

Seane Corn helps people who are committed to social change understand that to dismantle the systems that create oppression, you've got to dismantle the systems that exist within yourself. This world-renowned yoga instructor, activist and author of "Revolution of the Soul" shares how to dismantle those systems and learn where we can each be most of service for a better world. 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’shanti Gholar is the founder of the Brown Girl's Guide to Politics and the national political director for Emerge America--a national organization devoted to getting more Democratic women into office. You'll hear how A’shanti went from watching CSPAN as a kid, with her mom, to working for President Barack Obama, the DNC and the NAACP before joining Emerge America. And she'll share what it's going to take to get more women of color elected to office. Support our production with a tax deductible donation at inflectionpointradio.org/contribute.

A new scientific study shows that men are funnier than women. In this Feminist Detective segment, special guest, author and journalist, Ruth Whippman and Lauren get to the bottom of this finding and seize the means of humor production!

Jane Fonda. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Nancy Pelosi. Elizabeth Warren. Maxine Waters. Are "older" women taking over? By 2034 there will be more people 65 and older than there are people under 18. And by and large, women are outliving men. So what might all these older women mean in terms of a possible power shift, historically speaking? Listen to my conversation with Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and the author of the new book, “No Stopping Us Now. The Adventures of Older Women in American History” We explore how attitudes toward older women have shifted in America over the centuries – from the Plymouth Colony view that women were marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age," to quiet dismissal of post-reproductive females, to women’s role as perpetual caretaker (even when she might need caretaking herself), to the first female nominee for president. Lauren spoke with Gail on stage for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco in October of 2019. Support our production with a tax deductible contribution at inflectionpointradio.org/contribute. Thank you!