Our 100th Episode LIVE! Motherhood as a 'Serious' Topic with Poet Rachel Richardson

This is our 100th episode!

Holy cow! And we’ve got a really special one for it! Recorded LIVE, together, in person at KALW’s studio space in downtown San Francisco.

The episode opens with a conversation hosted by KALW’s Ben Trefny. He asks Sarah and I how making the podcast has changed us and asks us to define matrescence, which is our favorite way to start a conversation. Then, we chat a bit about the origins of this podcast, the evolving culture of motherhood, and briefly revisit a few iconic clips of previous episodes (shout out to Lucy Jones and to Nancy Reddy’s many thoughts and feelings about Home Alone’s Kate McAllister).

Then, a more normal episode (except recorded LIVE with an audience) begins! Berkeley-based poet✨ Rachel Richardson✨ joins us for a meta-ish, zoomed out conversation about the legitimacy of the topic of motherhood.

Wait, are we famous?! (ed note: no)

There were well-dressed folks, the chilled wine ran out (clichés be damned), and Sarah, Rachel and I had a wonderful conversation about whether or not motherhood as a topic worthy of serious intellectual engagement has ARRIVED yet. We talk about caregiving in general, wildfire summers, whether poetry about motherhood counts as high-brow poetry (guess where we land on that one) and generally have a WONDERFUL time. Rachel also reads and discusses a few of her gorgeous poems.

We cannot recommend Rachel’s beautiful books more! Every mother and parent and caregiver should read SMOTHER and HUNDRED-YEAR WAVE.

To cap it all off, we name out loud the people who got us through the pandemic (here’s looking at you Courtney Martin), and finish with an ✨audience-sourced “like my mom always said,” ✨(shout out to Patricia Zaballos).

Probably talking about whether our headphones look weird and if we’re doing this correctly.

Sarah made STICKERS (see below) and they rule.

We’ll try to figure out how to sell them online, and we will DEFINITELY be sending them to our paid subscribers. Hit us up in the comments or via Instagram or email if you want these and we’ll work something out.

Sarah has discovered a new possible career plan, and that's making amazing stickers about and related to motherhood in late capitalism.

Thanks to all the folks who came out for this incredibly special evening, and to all of the listeners who’ve been with us through 100 episodes of talking about mom stuff - macro and micro. We’re so grateful to do this work.

If you get to the part of the episode where the image below makes sense to you, please let us know. You win a starburst or something.

P.S. Did you hear?! In the days leading up the Mothers Day this year, our podcast was featured by local bay area radio station KALW as part of their “Bay Made” series celebrating local podcasters’ work. You can listen to edited episodes they played live on air here. Thank you to KALW! What a treat.

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