The Feminist Present cover image

The Feminist Present

Latest episodes

undefined
Aug 26, 2020 • 1h 13min

Debate Me!: TFP Clayman Conversations

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.
undefined
Aug 19, 2020 • 1h 3min

Laura and Adrian Unplugged: TFP Guestless Special #1

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!
undefined
Aug 12, 2020 • 1h 1min

Episode 10 - Rebecca Traister

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.
undefined
Aug 5, 2020 • 58min

Episode 9 - Young Jean Lee

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.
undefined
Jul 29, 2020 • 54min

Episode 8 - Grace Parra

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.
undefined
Jul 22, 2020 • 1h 1min

Episode 7 - Anthony C. Ocampo

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.
undefined
Jul 15, 2020 • 1h 1min

Episode 6 - Sarah Marshall + Michael Hobbes of You're Wrong About

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.
undefined
Jul 8, 2020 • 49min

Episode 5 - Moira Donegan

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.]
undefined
Jul 1, 2020 • 54min

Episode 4 - Danny M. Lavery

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.]
undefined
Jun 24, 2020 • 48min

Episode 3 - Jia Tolentino

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.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode